Welcome
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Words of a Man Who Made his Name" (a poem from Airs & Voices)
is posted on the page for that book on this website. Just click on the book title in the right-hand column.
On Friday evening March 1, 2019
the Trustees of Reservations at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts
in conjunction with the New England Poetry Club
will hold a poetry reading -- ADMISSION FREE -- featuring Paula Bonnell, David Miller, and Steve Rapp.
DID YOU KNOW
that right now the world's largest, heaviest, and most concrete poetry anthology
is in downtown Boston ?
That's because Boston City Hall has also made itself an annual poetry anthology!
Each spring, in a citywide contest, the City selects poems to be printed on plaques and displayed near the elevators for a year.
This time the plaques are just around the corner from twelve of the elevator bays on eight of its floors.
Near the South Elevators on the Second Floor is "The Sun's Progress" by Paula Bonnell.
Having attended the spring 2018 reading in City Hall to launch this year's "issue"
and also subsequently having taken an elevator tour of the building, I can assure you
that the 18 poems other than this website proprietor's are all well worth reading and are wonderfully varied.
In inviting people to send poems and in selecting from them the City focused on a theme of Diverse Neighborhoods.
Poetry books published in 2017 - American Book Fest's winner, 7 finalists,
and 12 featured poetry titles of 2017 HERE.
Scrolling down from the top,
the tenth collection is tales retold.
For links to more individual poems and two sequences, go to the "In the window" page (by clicking its name above).
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What else you can find here:
By clicking on their titles, in the sidebar or wherever they are given in blue,
you'll arrive at the pages for each book where you'll find cover images, quotes given for the books.
For Before the Alphabet, there are also some readers' reactions. Some poems from the books can be read through this site.
Below, here on the home page, there's more about Ciardi Prize book Airs & Voices
Also here are links to individual poems -- not in the books -- from online publications,
some of them below on this home page, plus others through links in sidebar (which appears on all pages on this site).
Buy books from the author?
Or without leaving home, it's also easy to do. All you need to know is the cost (below) and the address: PO Box 51860, Boston, MA 02205.
Message - hard cover with dust jacket $20
Airs & Voices - trade paperback $13.95
Before the Alphabet - chapbook, saddle-stitched $13.99
tales retold - perfect-bound chapbook $13.99
for shipping, add :
1 book $3
2 books $4
3 books $5
4 books $6
you’ll soon have the book(s) autographed by the author with gratitude.
the newest of the four --
published in April of 2017
"In this remarkable collection Bonnell enters sideways, as it were, stories and histories
that we thought we knew well.
Lucid and lithe, her words tilt us into new regions of possibility."
-- Peter Schwenger, author of At the Borders of Sleep: On Liminal Literature
"In tales retold, Paula Bonnell burrows inside familiar tales from myth, legend, and popular culture, reimagining them to reveal insights that often amuse and always surprise. I admire Bonnell's subtlety . . . These are poems worth pondering."
-- Elaine Ford, author of The American Wife: Stories
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for more, click the book's title just below:
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RADIO INTERVIEW of Paula Bonnell by Gregory Josselyn
while you're there you can also check out as many others as may interest you.
Essay about Szymborska's poems as translated into English
What have some readers said about Before the Alphabet?
You can see several quotes from members of a book group in California by taking the blue link for Before the Alphabet at the top of the sidebar to your right. Then scroll down to the heading "reactions to Before the Alphabet".
Anywhere in the site, clicking on the blue titles will take you somewhere else where more is given for the poem or book.
For a report on an April 18, 2013 reading in Boston, and for work -- two poems, an essay-- and tidbits, just go to the
In the window page via the tab words in the blue bar above.
For more poems, see QUICK LINKS, at right, below.
For an overview of all three Selected Works, you are invited to visit BOOKS.
Quick Links will take you directly to places in the site where you can find poems currently posted and places elsewhere where you can buy the books or read more about them and their poems.
Selected by Mark Jarman
In selecting Airs & Voices for the Ciardi Prize, poet and critic Mark Jarman said,
The voice in Airs & Voices is fresh and original. Though the poet never labors to be significant, even the slightest poem lingers in memory. Wallace Stevens's thoughtfulness is present, but so is his playfulness. Kenneth Koch's playfulness is here, but so is his thoughtfulness. Whether speaking as various snowmen in "New Song" or as parts of a household in "Domestic Opera," the poet finds just the right expression for the subject, with a warmth and good humor that are in short supply nowadays. Sometimes the compassion is startling, as in "Elegy for an Unlikeable Sister-in-Law." Yet an austerity can take hold as well. "The Voices" makes us listen again to the things we said in response to 9/11. Finally, to paraphrase one of the most moving poems in Airs & Voices, "History and a House," this poetry is "so good. It must have happened before." And yet it all seems brand new.
More about Airs & Voices:
Richard Wilbur called Airs & Voices "enchanting," adding that it deals "subtly with painful or touching things,
as in 'History & a House.'"
Maxine Kumin said Airs & Voices is "full of quirky insights that keep Bonnell's poems fresh and interesting."
"A clear, subtle, witty, and authentic voice," said X. J. Kennedy. " 'The Voices' may be one of the wisest comments on the catastrophe of 9/11 an American poet has made."
Read the full text of these three poets' quotes by taking the link below:
A description of the poems in Airs & Voices appears on the Books page.