Solo Concert

Diana Senechal is a great and original poet, with one eye on tradition and one astringent, compassionate eye on what really is--here in the shadowy now. Her presence, it's almost an ache, is deeply compelling and moving. - Rick Moody, author of Hotels of North America

Solo Concert is centered on music, but more the delicate interstices-"the unheard hosanna," "bells in a slant of sun"-than blaring crescendos. These poems are listeners rather than talkers. Senechal's poetic voice, often humble and disarming ("I'm still learning to talk"), is ultimately inexorable ("I must occur"). In "Jackrabbit," she imagines a roadkill rabbit the instant before death in the headlights asking itself "what if, what if." Solo Concert has this kind of immediacy: the poet as large-eared conduit staying open to "the roar of things I do not understand." It's a tremendous debut collection. - John Wall Barger, author of The Elephant of Silence

A poem by Diana Senechal is smart, witty, and resourceful. Also it boasts a stone-like integrity. And Solo Concert, subtly coherent and evidently unified by theme, is itself like a "multitude" of stones on a gravestone, placed there by pilgrims, in concert evoking "songs" in the "kindred air," hosannas perhaps of "holy gadflies." - David Havird, author of Weathering: Poems and Recollections

The voice lurking behind everyday things is like meaning. If we try to grasp it by force, it always slips through our fingers. However, if we give up control and allow it to slip away, we too can become listeners to a world where meaning begins to take shape without us. Yet it always and continuously pertains to us. Diana Senechal's poems are beautiful imprints of this music. - Csenger Kertai, author of B. rövid élete ("The Short Life of B.")