Last week, I was invited to be part of the launch of Claudia Stanek’s poetry chapbook, Beneath Occluded Shine. This is a short collection of 16 powerful poems all written in response to poems from Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions. Neruda’s questions are essentially unanswerable. Claudia doesn’t attempt to answer Neruda although responding to a question with a question is sometimes its own answer. But I prefer to read these poems as wrestling with all of the deepest parts of our shared humanity.
You can read one of Claudia’s poems, Sunday Morning in Broken November, originally published here in Bitterzoet Magazine.
The book launch took place virtually as part of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse, hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche, who are based out of New Mexico. In one of the most unique reading events I’ve ever been part of, Claudia invited Jules and John, as well as poets Catherine Faurot, Gail Hosking and me to alternate reading all of the poems in Beneath Occluded Shine. The result was something that felt meditative if not downright spiritual.
You can watch and listen to our reading of Claudia’s work on YouTube.
And don’t forget to order Beneath Occluded Shine from Finishing Line Press.
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And in case you missed it, I celebrated National Poetry Month by reading new poems from my forthcoming collection, Feller, forthcoming in August 2025. You can listen to the reading by following the links here.
Denton Loving 