- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsBlogGift CardsMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems
Robert L. Penick's short, masterful poems have been showing up in small press magazines since the early 1990s. The Art of Mercy, his first full-length collection, contains excerpts from four chapbooks, as well as fifty-seven new and previously uncollected poems.
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Penick is a true man of the streets, chronicling with clear-eyed sensitivity the ordinary lives of marginalized people, the elderly, the forgotten, the blue-collar workplace, the seductions of alcohol, and the heartbreak of failed relationships..
Written in a straightforward narrative style, with deft use of metaphor, these poems sneak up on you with understated dignity.
The 100 poems collected in The Art of Mercy represent the best of a long, quiet career in the poetry trenches.
In Penick's own words:
"This book took forty years of staring out of windows, finding release in booze and borrowed women, and scraping away at an indistinct idea of kindness and deliverance, the way a would-be prison escapee would work on a cement seam, hoping someday to see the daylight on the other side of the wall. Along the way, I've acquired a good command of cliche-less narrative. My major accomplishment: Stamina."
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Penick is a true man of the streets, chronicling with clear-eyed sensitivity the ordinary lives of marginalized people, the elderly, the forgotten, the blue-collar workplace, the seductions of alcohol, and the heartbreak of failed relationships..
Written in a straightforward narrative style, with deft use of metaphor, these poems sneak up on you with understated dignity.
The 100 poems collected in The Art of Mercy represent the best of a long, quiet career in the poetry trenches.
In Penick's own words:
"This book took forty years of staring out of windows, finding release in booze and borrowed women, and scraping away at an indistinct idea of kindness and deliverance, the way a would-be prison escapee would work on a cement seam, hoping someday to see the daylight on the other side of the wall. Along the way, I've acquired a good command of cliche-less narrative. My major accomplishment: Stamina."
Book Details
- Publisher: Hohm Press
- Publish Date: Oct 15th, 2023
- Pages: 128
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.40in - 0.45lb
- EAN: 9781942493907
- Categories: • American - General
About the Author
Penick, Robert L.: - The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in nearly 200 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. He has been chronicling the world and our interactions for more than forty years, from the vantage point of jailhouses, coffeehouses, and taverns, looking for humanity in every shard of glass and rusted bottle cap. More of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net.
Praise for this book
"Robert L. Penick chronicles the secret sculptors, stillness, the barely noticed. He tosses knuckle balls directly at our heads, but they disappear, only to drop at our feet hours later. When he writes about perfect moments, he doesn't "mean perfect perfect, / like a dream date with a gymnast...but the best you will get / in this incarnation." The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems represents a brilliant body of work from a poet of exquisite insight, truthfulness and humility."
--Robert Okaji, author of Buddha's Not Talking
--Robert Okaji, author of Buddha's Not Talking
"Perhaps what's most masterful about Robert L. Penick is his ability to reel you in as you turn page after page once you've read a poem. No small feat. His book, The Art of Mercy, New and Selected Poems, is an unblinking collection delving into the DNA of the human condition. Whether exploring the pains and wonders of growing up or facing the slow slog of aging, Penick culls through the realities of life with candor, grace, and courage, connecting intellectually and emotionally with the audience. Each poem offers a gem of truth that echoes through us all. This is what good poetry can do. This is what good poetry is for. Highly recommended.
--Dan Sicoli co-editor of Slipstream and author of Pagan Supper and the Allegories
--Dan Sicoli co-editor of Slipstream and author of Pagan Supper and the Allegories
"This book is not a documentation of the hopeless. Rather, this is a collection of vivid and insightful poems about people who lack the gold standard of wealth -- but have lives rich with experience, perspective, and insight, even if the insights are created by pain. As Penick writes: 'We are different: We breathe different air /exchange foreign coin. We are sedition.' And likewise, the poems in The Art of Mercy "breathe different air" as well, air that is fresh with understanding for those on the edges of our culture living their lives as best they can.
-- Michael Hathaway, Publisher, Chiron Review
-- Michael Hathaway, Publisher, Chiron Review