"The question is "who's/mad/enough to leave/the long song." Thankfully, as this welcome collection indicates, Joel Chace isn't. For if you're a poet there's nothing better. Not a single epic, not a really long or monster poem but rather the continued return engagement/return to engagement with words, with poems considered as songs which compose their own tunes as they go along. That engagement bestows some dignity (worth) upon the poet and upon all the years involved. It means the years can have some meaning beyond their counting. And not the same meaning but a variety as various as these poems' subjects and modes of composition. As readers, we'd be crazy to cut short our own engagement with Joel Chace's long and varied song."

--John Taggart


Joel Chace bravely meditates on the subtle and present daily perplexities we tend to pass over in favor of the obvious. His workis bold and clear, beautiful and tough. Cleaning The Mirror captures uncertain events as it sweeps across vast landscapes, bringing into focus spiritual and material recognitions that are not restricted to a few isolated others but are, at root, connected to us all.

—Amy King

Praise for O-D-E - by Joel Chace


It. IT! The IT that rules the poem comes clear here in this work by Joel Chase and that the rose is a volcano and vice versa and it is all a great force of imagination and that those entities within the poem, the poetry, those memories and (they are) beings that seem to populate poetry are all manifestations of poetry, the everyday is the mind and that above all hovering angels are poetry and that is what he has here so marvelously and succinctly proposed that the snow of his heart and mind - have come to populate the page with poetry that is refined and tangible imagination.

—Mike Basinksi

 

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Joel Chace's poetry and prose poetry has appeared in magazines such as 6ix, Tomorrow, Lost and Found Times, Coracle, Veer, Otoliths, and Xconnect.   He has published more than a dozen print and electronic collections.    Forthcoming from Paper Kite Press is matter no matter.   For many years, Chace has been Poetry Editor for the experimental electronic magazine 5_Trope. He is an NEH Fellow.