In the Garden of Fortunes
Poetry by Mark Walsh
$12.00
Praise for In the Garden of Fortunes
There’s a singular and wildly imaginative insistence and wisdom in Mark Walsh’s debut chapbook, In the Garden of Fortunes. Inspired by Chinese fortune cookies, these brief, lyrical microcosms nudge the reader to distinguish what deserves our attention or not, accommodating uncertainties and contradictory experiences. Remarkably attentive, with soulful precision and percussively musical lines, some imply a lost and complicated world: “You are the aftershock of rock slapping water,/rippling in all directions”. (No.3) while others cling to optimism as in his meditation on sea turtles cutting their salty trails inside the currents… “Never too old, too scared, too dead /to hope above the floor of the world.”(No. 32). Walsh delivers and raises the spirit. We follow his summons out of blurred lines of reality to calm where “The landscape quiets itself/and comes into focus. “(No. 14). May we hear more from this gifted poet.
Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest (Carnegie Mellon)
Mark Walsh
Mark Walsh is an English professor at Massasoit Community College, where he teaches literature and philosophy. He is a submissions reader for The Lily Poetry Review, and his book reviews have appeared in the Lily Poetry Review and Solstice. His poetry is published in Beatnick Cowboy, Lily Poetry Review, Abandoned Mine and Rituals.