Description

Welcome Distractions: Accessible Poems for Time-Strapped Humans
Carol Wierzbicki
“The towers fall and Mary Tyler Moore tosses her beret into the air,”
says Wierzbicki in “9/11 Paradox.” Paradoxes like “inertia drives the working
masses” inhabit these poems. Wierzbicki constantly puts her finger on the
workings of societal insanities so institutionally ingrained they cannot be
questioned. There can be no reasonable dialogue because, as she puts it in
“Age,” we are in a place “where we all speak different languages and yet push
the same buttons.” The experience of reading this book is crucial for our
times; the poems are a cagily “accessible” balm for what ails us. — Stephen
Paul Miller, author of any lie you tell will be the truth (Marsh Hawk Press)

Wierzbicki successfully challenges the notion of what poetry is as she
generously takes us to its core/essence. In this three-part collection,
whether they are socio-politically charged poems, odes to the borough
she lives in, poems written for her parents & her friends or for music she
loves, the brilliant accuracy of her viewpoint, where she stands, & the direct
humane manner in which she uses language is her strength & grace.
Be ready to open your mind/heart fully to get poetically distracted!
— Yuko Otomo, author of STUDY & Other Poems on Art
(Ugly Duckling Presse) and KOAN (New Feral Press)
There are plenty of anti-establishment writers who present themselves as wild
rebels raging outside the system, or who tell tales about marginalized characters.
Wierzbicki’s work offers a more bitter and more accurate takedown of
many of the mainstream’s hollow idols and ideas. The deft conclusion of her
ruminations is a sense of earned sadness about the tiny shifts people make to
preserve a single shred of dignity in the corporate landscape, shown with such
measured compassion in “Letter to a Security Guard.” — Jim Feast, author of
Neo Phobe and Long Day, Counting Tomorrow (Autonomedia)
ISBN: 9781570273360
Paperbound, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 114 pages, $15.95