Free Verse
Marsh River Editions

Catch and Release
Chasing Saturday Night
in search of "Green Dolphin Street"
Lines on Lake Winnebago
Loose Change
Mead
Saying Grace
Slightly Off Q
Something Near the Dance Floor
Waiting For Beethoven
Walnut from Waterloo

"Getting Close to Home"

I swear that woman passing me in the silver
Grand Am is Betty Larsen, though
she's been dead ten years or more,
and wouldn't be caught dead
in a Grand Am.
But that's her platinum bouffant hairdo,
her profile straining forward to get home
before her husband
to greet Don at the door in
fresh makeup, fresh lipstick,
a fresh drink in her hand
for his hard day.

And that man riding the Harley next to me--
that generous belly under the strap
T-shirt, the thin arms,
the wispy white hair blowing
from under the kerchief--
that man is my father,
who never rode a Harley,
only horses.

I must be close to home.

James P. Lenfestey's Saying Grace is a road trip, by alternately joyful and elegiac routes, into the country of the heart. Always generous, always on the side of life, Lenfestey isn't afraid to look at death and its mysteries. Yet when we've closed these pages, it's the zest we remember, the appetite for the journey itself, "ahead the blue black sky full / of oncoming lights and stars." What better way of "saying grace" than to exclaim, along with the author of these exuberant, wide-ranging poems, "I must be close to home"?

-Thomas R. Smith
author of The Dark Indigo Current

James P. Lenfestey does not shy away from the dark memory, the sad finalities of life, or even the troublesome business of being human--all those comic contradictions, wild-eyed moments, and split-second epiphanies. That's what makes these poems beautiful and wise. This is true remembrance and reconciliation. I bow to these poems. Every one!

-Denise Sweet
author of As Those With Faith Will Do: Selected Poetry and Prose

The poems in Saying Grace convey a deep spirituality rooted in ourselves and nature. Like all that is truly spiritual (think of Francis of Assisi who communed with birds and plants), these poems focus on this world where even a deer carcass can be a blessed event: "crows pick at crumpled hide and bones, / white tails flag the passing wind" (from "Crossing the Freeway"). There are many such fortunate, luminous moments in this collection. Sometimes the act of simply naming becomes a spiritual event filled with fleabane, puccoon and the "pale architecture of chicory" (from "Roadside Flowers"). It's as though Jim Lenfestey has continued not only Adam's task of naming, but also the Orphic necessity of singing things into being. It all is part of a marvelous vision, and the question Jim poses in the final poem is one we should all be asking: "What am I doing now that I'm in Paradise?"

-John Minczeski
author of Circle Routes, winner of the 2000 Akron Poetry Prize