Description

Suburban Ambush
Ron Kolm

“Ron Kolm’s poems leave you with a lot of images and lines to savor and ponder — ‘absolute gravity / In a zero-cold zone,’ the lone nightfighter ‘out beyond the edge of love’ — but he’s no mere cleverist. There’s a deep and devious wisdom here, and a big heart.’’ — John Strausbaugh, author of The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, A History of Greenwich Village.

“Ron Kolm is a master of the short line. His poems are filled with wit and pathos. He once said of me that I was a populist poet but in all truth this honor belongs to him. He is a lover of humanity; the common man and the artist as well. He fills his short lines with the long breath of life, and his sensibilities range from low art to high art in one fell swoop with simple, straight forward language that everyone can understand. But don’t be fooled by this seeming innocence. His street-wise statements are filled with deep warmth and wisdom. From ‘Problem Child’: ‘I’d like to forge / A humanism / So exact / The future becomes / Imaginable again.’ He gets inside your skull, deep within your heart and ‘out beyond the edge of love’.” — Steve Dalachinsky, author of A Superintendent’s Eyes and The Final Nite & Other Poems: The Complete Notes from a Charles Gayle Notebook 1987–2006.