Playful Song Called Beautiful ranges far into the intersections of faith and scientific thought, places where 鈥渢here is no stranger who is / stranger than you, no / familiar who鈥檚 more / familiar.鈥 In poems that are either formally rhymed and metered or written in syllabically structured three-line stanzas, Blair wanders among universal orders and failures of desire, where the unlikeliness of any of us being who we are, what we are, where we are forces us to consider鈥攁nd reconsider鈥攖he possibilities of belief and meaning. Blair鈥檚 poems are elegant and earthy, sometimes profane, and sometimes lovingly playful.
From the invisible landscape of elementary particles to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe鈥檚 love of the smell of rotten apples, Blair鈥檚 poems direct us through a 鈥済reat wide world that is / ours and never ours鈥 and somewhere among the rolling tercets, the transcendent becomes not only possible, but entirely inevitable.
鈥淛ohn Blair is one of those poets who can do almost anything with a line: make it hum, make it fly鈥斺榯o fill the space where wings once sung in you.鈥 Playful Song Called Beautiful presents musings on mortality that鈥檒l make you glad to be alive.鈥濃擠avid Galef, author, My Date with Neanderthal Woman
鈥淚n these poems, a foodie banquet of delicious, exotic, risky platters of language glides before us. The dark and grit of a Baudelaire becomes the elegance of a Yeats, or the logic of an Auden gives way to the effervescent mysteries of a Rimbaud. In these wonderful meditations upon the world鈥檚 uncertainties, we鈥檙e thrilled by the dangerous, delightful turns.鈥濃擩ohn Bensko, author, Visitations
鈥淩ife with juicy epigraphs, gleeful alliteration, and dynamic enjambment, John Blair鈥檚 latest book feels like philosophy filtered through wit and joy. Who could have imagined that insouciance and insight, though they share a prefix, could seem so akin, but here comes Playful Song Called Beautiful as proof.鈥濃擟yrus Cassells
鈥淚n John Blair鈥檚 Playful Song Called Beautiful, rolling tercets become the unlikely medium for all manner of slippery, expansive, and emotive thinking. In these quietly arresting poems, opposites rhyme and the past gains all the grit of the present. And yet, amidst all this memory, 鈥楾here is no future.鈥 For Blair, poetry is process, a forum where 鈥楾oday is under / construction, thank you / for waiting.鈥 Nietzsche, Galileo, Goethe, Plato, Joyce, and others make visitations, and they, too, suffer the pressure, 鈥榯he lovely pain鈥 of the present, must mean something now to this fierce, philosophical, and unforgiving sensibility. Blair鈥檚 poetry is shifting and its mutable meaning is 鈥榓ll the comfort you need, all / the comfort you get.鈥欌濃擟raig Morgan Teicher, judge, 2015 海角乱伦社区Poetry Prize
