Within these pages are poems that present childhood and parenthood with equal frankness, that edge the everyday with humor, and that touch base with lyrical masters. Whether he writes about baseball players, the terrors of our modern world, or the little dis/comforts of home, Berecka’s poems verily zing with presence.

 

                        --Joey Brown, The Feral Love Poems and Oklahomaography

 

The title of Alan Berecka’s new book of selected and new poems is Atlas Sighs, and the reason Atlas is sighing instead of shrugging has a lot to do with the lightness Alan injects into the world with his poetry. What he’s given us here is a book that pulls from four previous collections and adds a new collection’s worth of poems to the mix. It’s a lovely way to re-visit Berecka classics side by side with new permutations of that world weary yet world loving point of view of his that reorders the broken world just the tiniest of bits so that we can carry on, like Atlas, still burdened but lighter of step.

 

                        --Hank Jones, Too Late for Manly Hands 

 

Generally speaking, the use of humor in poetry is a characteristic of “light verse.”  In the case of Alan Berecka, however, humor is not only pervasive in much of his poetry but skillfully enhances his exploration of family quirks and eccentricities, philosophical introspection, spirituality, and trenchant social commentary.  Hence, Berecka’s body of work is anything but “light verse.”  This reviewer has been privileged to witness Berecka’s poetry readings on numerous occasions and has never witnessed an audience erupting into laughter in the manner this poet’s audiences routinely do.  He utilizes humor with the skill of a brilliant comedian, but a comedian whose mastery of the written word rivals that of his extraordinary performance on the stage.  

With the new poems in this long-awaited volume, Berecka has blended the “comic” and “sublime” into a poetic conceit uniquely his own.  The following lines from his stellar poem, “Of Spiritual Storms and Ports” illustrate the poet’s remarkable achievement: “…we use wine not grape juice / at communion because that joyous buzz / from a good belt of wine is a precursor / of the joys we can find through the Lord…”

Alan Berecka is a poet to be carefully read and heard.

                        --Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate

                        Winner, 2023 Spur Award (Western Writers of America)

                        Author of As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems