Literary Reviews
SONGS OF SEVEN DAYS
“There is light in these poems, and the refraction is marvelous. . . .thoughtful, gentle, rueful, playful, joyful and solemn poetics . . . .”
Lone Star Literary Life
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”A mastery of poetic forms . . . .reads like a well-researched poetic travelogue in love with nature . . . .[T] he writing betrays a rapacious curiosity about both the physical world around us and the forces that govern it, leavened with generous doses of humor and a deep sense of social justice and compassion.”
San Antonio Review
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Reminiscent of Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver, James Dennis’s Songs of Seven Days is a wide-ranging and luminous meditation on Creation, faith, beauty, architecture, science, and love. These poems, filled with grace and hope, humor and wisdom, are both a comfort and a call to action. They will stay with me for a long time, and I'm thankful for the company.
Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine and recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
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Part astronomy lesson, part atlas, part bestiary, part prayer, Songs of Seven Days is at heart a reflection on the unreachable and the unknowable, most often encountered at the numinous place that James Dennis calls—in one of his memorable plain-spoken lines— “the intersection of desire and hope.”
Stephen Harrigan, author of The Leopard Is Loose, winner of Texas Medal of the Arts
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Dennis alternates between stunning beauty and wry wit as he traces the elements of creation and our connection to each one. Songs of Seven Days is rendered in tender, thoughtful language that explores the physical and philosophical bonds of existence—its empty longing, and its unabashed joy. With this collection, Dennis is at his mischievous best—a barefoot child, grinning at the sky.
James Wade, Two-time Spur Award-winning author, AUTHOR OF Beasts of the Earth
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In his new collection, Songs of Seven Days, James Dennis lifts us into a kind of holiness. I’m speaking here about the relationship words can forge with each other, which, for me, is a sacred thing. These poems are exquisite in their design and execution. The thinking behind these words is profound. Dennis lays out the fine points of creation, living, and love with a deft hand. Songs of Seven Days is a book you’ll delight in reading. And then you’ll ponder it. And then you’ll revisit it again and again.
W.K. Stratton, author of the Western Heritage Award-winning Last Red Dirt Embrace and the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Wild Bunch
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In Songs of Seven Days, James Dennis encompasses all creation, in poems that ask and watch and wonder. He maintains a balance between conversational and formal, always graceful in contemplations on the paradox of the rational miracle. Tracing creation and our fascinations, Dennis muses on shadow, stone, time and sky, with an openness, a humanity that keeps the holy mysterious, wondrous. So consistent is this vision that his “Shabat,” the book’s final poem ends with “Let us look upon / the world we once knew so well / with artless, childlike, and unwearied eyes.” I’d change that to “artful” in his perfect understanding of imperfection.
Jim LaVilla-Havelin, author of West, Poems of a Place and former poetry editor, San Antonio Express-News
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A poetic tour de force! In these poems, James R. Dennis transports his readers to precisely the times, places, and mindsets of precisely where he wants us to go. His writing is accessible, descriptive, and evocative as we journey through the Genesis creation story of heavens and the earth—and the blobfish. Sometimes outright funny, sometimes hard-hitting, this is poetry for deep dives and ethereal ascents.
Kristine Hall, editor and publisher, Lone Star Literary Life
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James R. Dennis’s Songs of Seven Days is a book of light and questions. From West Texas to Ireland to the gates of Heaven itself, Dennis ranges and seeks, and sets his attention on answering the unanswerable, this 'predicament we find ourselves in.'
J. Bruce Fuller, author of How to Drown a Boy, director at Texas Review Press
LISTENING DEVICES
These poems make the reader sit up and take notice, pause in wonder, listen more deeply to the details of life.
MARY EARLE, AUTHOR OF DID YOU SING YOUR SONG?
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Asked whether he could be the writer he is apart from his life in Texas, Dennis answered, “I don't think so.”
"I am descended from Irish immigrants who settled in Texas before Stephen F. Austin ever got his hands on a land grant. I grew up in Odessa, Texas, with blue-haired, Irish Catholic ladies who went to Mass every day. To be Catholic in Odessa was to worship in a church with Spanish influences. There were many different cultures clashing in Odessa because almost anybody could get a job in the oilfields. And they came. And so I’m a combination of these different streams of experience and culture, which is a microcosm of the state, of the border state of Texas. These countless combinations are a rich, rich vein for art of every kind. And I am the beneficiary; every story I’ve ever told, from my poetry to the Arceneaux mysteries, are a product of cultural conflict. And then there’s what Sarah Bird calls my “aw, shucks” persona. I’m interested in creating poetic ideas in common language."
LONE STAR LISTENS: JAMES DENNIS AND THE POETICS OF IDENTITY |
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE
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In Listening Devices, James Dennis brings a near Renaissance breadth of vision to bear on a dizzying array of topics—murder hornets, the Fibonacci sequence, reincarnation, Gandhi, the dreariness of January, even an ill-behaved dog. While much of his work probes spiritual mysteries or confronts societal ills like the death penalty, U.S. immigration policy, and Covid-19, he still finds room for humor, vigorously defending “the cowardice of (his) convictions.” Further, Dennis is as much at home with the sonnet or ghazal as with free verse, and this command of craft, coupled with his deep music and arresting imagery, transforms the seemingly ordinary into the breath-taking. No doubt about it: James Dennis is a poetic wizard, and at least some of that magic is sure to rub off on his readers. How lucky they are.
CAROL COFFEE REPOSA
2018 TEXAS POET LAUREATE
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James Dennis is hiding a boatload of erudition behind his adorable aw-shucks persona. Both the learning and Dennis’s profound compassion shine forth majestically in Listening Devices. The combination bowls me over!
SARAH BIRD
AUTHOR OF DAUGHTER OF A DAUGHTER OF A QUEEN
TEXAS WRITER OF THE YEAR
“I have been through Listening Devices three times. Upon the first look—a few poems I recognized and remembered, and some perfectly clearly, and I was overwhelmed by the physical beauty of the book. On the second reading—dipping in, one or two—hearing the Wallace Stevens and missing, because only a smattering, the Yeats. Not just dipping, able to use the rhythms and the rhymes of one to learn the language of the next and next. And on the third occasion, I read straight through, cover to cover (beautiful cover to beautiful cover)—instructed in listening, in paradox, in contemplation, in outrage and shame, in rising above and in taking aim.
The book is a listening device, and we are not left to our own devices—James Dennis gives us a hand along the way, again and again, in poems most humane. Listening Devices offers us specific poems, lines that will haunt me forever, heal me now, stand against the tyrannies that break us. We are enriched, forgiven, healed, and hoped for with Dennis’ his world. ‘And only the vocabulary of ecstasy remains.’ There's William Blake here too, presiding over it all.”
JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN
POETRY EDITOR, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS
Correspondence in D Minor
“This beautifully crafted collection walks us through the hallways of love, loss, wit, history, mythology, science, faith, and literature. Elegiac and disarmingly clever.”
Sarah Bird
Author of A Love Letter to Texas Women
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“These poems take big leaps across history, the personal, literature, politics, geography, and form, to name a few. The poet has examined—from Haemon to Haber and beyond—and often found humanity wanting, hence the sad D Minor chord. But there is also fine leavening humor and a compelling engagement with the mystery of being alive.”
Rosemary Catacalos
Texas Poet Laureate 2013
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“James Dennis writes with erudition, wit, and a breath of fresh West Texas air on a dazzling array of historical, biblical, and classical topics. Here are poems woven of personal experience and a genuine love for the world; poems of hard-won faith and unflinching empathy in a voice brave, wry, and bracingly original. Correspondence in D Minor is a humdinger of a debut.”
Noel Crook,
Author of Salt Moon
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“James Dennis is grappling with regret and longing, as well as amusing us and himself, frequently with irreverent humor. Dennis’ work accommodates both 'skedaddle' and 'imprimatur in the same poem. The cleverness evident in these poems belies a humility, just a guy trying to do no harm, and maybe figure out how to escape the cycles of history along the way. Dennis is skillful and inspired, both the artist and the technician.”
—Texas Book Lover
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“These poems reveal James Dennis’ “dry, wry humor, and his penchant for mixing dazzling displays of erudition and vivid description with just plain talk. In his impressive debut collection of poetry, Dennis uses those same gifts to speak strongly against the currents of chaos in our time, and in times past when power, authority, and knowledge were abused in the name of God and country. He casts a warm, wise, and meditative eye on questions of life and death, love and hatred, war and peace, faith and doubt, that become more acute as the mind and heart mature, and takes the measure of what it means to be human.”
—San Antonio Express News
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“A beautiful collection.”
—Stories from Texas
Awards
LISTENING DEVICES
Winner, International Book Award (RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL POETRY)
—INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Correspondence in D Minor
Named one of the “Best Books of 2016”
—San Antonio Express News
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Selected for the HOW International Book Design Award for 2016
—HOW International
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Selected as a Finalist for the Julie Suck Poetry Award