Approaching the Center
By Myronn Hardy

Winner of the Josephine Miles / PEN Oakland National Literary Award

"A wondrous collection of poems, as compelling as stars. Stark arresting visions – Mr. Hardy's voice recalls the word-magic of early Cornelius Eady. This collection charts the journey of a heart adrift in the world, the journey of a heart in search of itself. I salute these poems and I salute the wisdom and craft of their composer."

         ––Junot Diaz

"Myronn Hardy is a poet of the world, universal in the truest sense. He brings exquisite poetic diction and a gift for the image to the plazas of Havana, the villages of Madagascar, a tin schoolhouse in Soweto, an ancient wall in Rome scarred with racist graffiti. But this is not a collection of vacation poems; Hardy is sensitive to suffering and defiance of suffering all around him. The poet awakens ghosts, invoking Hughes and Lorca, two voices that resonate throughout the poems. Just as the poet spreads a map across a picnic table in Arkansas, showing his grandparents the 'ghost lands' of Africa they have forgotten, so he maps a world of poetry for the rest of us, drawing a line from Soweto to Little Rock. The poetry of Myronn Hardy is indelibly vivid; he makes a memorable debut."

         ––Martin Espada

"This wonderful first collection always recalibrates itself on the human heart. These poems are straightforward, quiet, robust in their smallness, never saying more than what has to be said. Here's a book shaped by a keen sense of aesthetics that speaks for itself."

         ––Yusef Komunyakaa

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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