Vox Populi, Poetry
“Despite its abecedarian structure, Vox Populi is refreshingly free of gimmicks. The poet relies on the brilliance inherent in the language to illustrate salient points and doesn't shock for the mere sake of doing so. This is, indeed, a poetry of restraint, but it imparts a mystique that could be described as wanton and wild, although still cerebral. Polish Hasidim believed that a "pneuma" (spirit breath) lived in the pages of the most sacred texts; the pages of this witty 26-part poem exhale the breezes of the natural world when all the pages of history are being blown away before our eyes.”
— Larry Sawyer
“I was only as far as the letter B (for Blamelessness) but it was already clear that if Virginia Konchan could sustain the wonderfully inventive, ambitious, and wholly unpredictable poem through the rest of the alphabet she’d have written something very special indeed. And sustain it she does: the poem gathers its alliterations, rhythms, and resonance letter by letter, into a force that never loses its freshness even as it patterns coalesce into themes. It’s a poem that revels in wit and the complexity of language, but in which wit is at the service of an awareness of the unequal political-social order, it’ s a poem that refuses to identify with the illusions of celebrity pop culture. Virginia Konchan has written an original, deeply imagined work, bristling with intelligence, passion, and memorable lines.'“
—Stuart Dybeck
Review by Larry Sawyer in Rain Taxi
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