S4N Books releases full-length poetry collection by Adam Penna

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM S4N BOOKS*



LITTLE SONGS & LYRICS TO GENJI
Poems by Adam Penna
Release Date: March 1, 2010
127pp 978-0-9798707-1-2
S4N BOOKS

Little Songs & Lyrics to Genji are two sequences of poems where, in the author’s words, he was attempting daily to “right” himself.

The poems of Little Songs take an unrhymed sonnet form that looks back to the religious work of Donne and Hopkins, and the autobiographical element in Dante’s New Life, to weave a spiritual meditation on the natural world and the sacred minutiae of everyday living. In each poem we are shown suburban streets, homes, and front-yards, and the trees and animals and human inhabitants that fill those spaces, all presented through the mind of the quietly-seeing poet. What we emerge with is a evocation of a world akin to Wallace Stevens’s vision of New Haven, alive with eternity.

The poems in Lyrics to Genji are filled with the same subjects, but approach them more playfully. Addressed to an invisible friend named Genji (a name which means “treasure”), the poet begs answers to the universal and mundane questions of his day (“Genji, do you have a brother?”, “Who could bear a full life, Genji?”), and ruminates over recurring dreams, childhood memories, questions of ethical responsibility as well as home repair, and the frequent, mischievous presence of Genji’s wife. Whereas Little Songs approaches something like direct prayer, Lyrics to Genji come closer to Zen meditations, or koans.

The overall vision of this unique collection is one of abiding mystery and gratitude for the natural and invisible worlds, and for a state of quiet contemplation that brings such awareness about. As the poet says to his friend: “I’m grateful, Genji./How do I know?/I sing.”


Adam Penna lives in East Moriches, New York, with his wife, and teaches at Suffolk County Community College. He is the author of The Love of a Sleeper (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and his poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Cider Press Review, The Basilica Review and Verse Daily.

He blogs at http://www.adampenna.wordpress.com/.

S4N BOOKS
6904 Colonial Road #28 Brooklyn, NY 11209
online: http://www.s4nbooks.com/
email: editors@s4nbooks.com

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Dear Fellow Poets, Editors and Publisher Friends:


S4N has just published my first full-length collection of poetry. Please follow this link to purchase from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Songs-Lyrics-Genji-Penna/dp/0979870712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1268411217&sr=8-1.


All my best,
Adam Penna