Bend of Quiet

Kenneth Pobo has five books and twenty chapbooks published. His work has appeared in: Hawaii Review, Antigonish Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Indiana Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, and elsewhere. He began writing poetry in 1970. He teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Pennsylvania. ~~~~ Pobo’s poems are a provocative and thoughtful distillation of the questions of survival-the survival not only of humans, but especially of animals, large and small, and of his beloved plants. His elegant, readable poetry is also ethical and ironic, playful and serious. He keeps his focus on the urgent pulse of what really matters. ~ -Nuala Archer, author of Inch Aeons and From A Mobile Home ~ Every culture has its seers and visionaries, its 'sensitives' who see and hear more than the rest of us. In American poetry, one such writer is Kenneth Pobo, whose lyrics reveal the inner lives if fauna and flora, of suburban yards and city zoos. Who speaks for the Mirandy roses, for the asters, toad lilies and mums? Our poet Kenneth Pobo croons open those delicate doors. Who sings for scorpions and endangered worker bees, for threatened polar bears and harp seals? The man with the harp is our bard, Kenneth Pobo. His lines are knife-sharp, but they do no harm. On the contrary, these are healing songs in the tradition of tribal shamans and medicine men. They are love songs, clearly articulated in the American Idiom. They wake us, remind us to care for the spirits embodied within us and all around us, to live in earth’s mystery without destroying it further. ~ -Marilyn Kallet, author of The Love That Moves Me and Packing Light: New And Selected Poems ~ Close observation imbues these striking poems that illuminate both the natural world and the perceiving eye. Concern for the environment: 'The Earth gets terrible wounds/Our nightmare hands can strangle anything.' Countered with the dream garden where there is 'a hotel full of songbirds/singing all day, all night.' Images that root deeply, truly and unforgettably. ~ -Joan Colby, author of Dead Horses and The Wingback Chai