Something Past After

Something Past After is masterful, almost every poem in this book sparkles with quotable fire. To borrow from John, Something Past After is "a lighted candle with wings that visits the past before it moves forward, shock therapy for a suicidal god." -- S.A. Griffin, author of Dreams Gone Mad with Hope Macker speaks of the ordinary become extraordinary: the worsening crisis of climate change, the people we have lost, the ghost of violence and meaninglessness of borders. A beautiful tribute to Barry López begins: "I'm surprised you didn't take all the / winter birds with you if only for a moment." This is only one of many eulogies, each one a perfect conversation with the one gone. There is landscape here, and weather and-like all powerful writing-more questions than answers. The poems are answer enough, and I celebrate them. --Margaret Randall , author of Out of Violence Into Poetry: Poems 2018-2021 John Macker writes poems that contemplate like blue flames. They are patient and meandering like quiet, April nights. In Something Past After, he not only writes thoughtful elegies to inspiring writers and friends, Macker also pays tribute to our struggles to live in a time of changing landscapes and politics. Rooted in New Mexican pastorals and isolations, his poems look out the window and imagine the further away places so we can study dying glaciers, celebrate simple gourds, decode forests, and feel the strong Alamosa winds carry us. Like he writes, "All paths don't lead home or anywhere / else or nowhere at all. Each step is death or birth." -Juan J. Morales, author of The Handyman's Guide to End Times