Of Whiskey and Winter [Paperback]

Peter Conners (Author), Peter Johnson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2007

“Peter Conners' stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again.”—Naomi Shihab Nye

“I don’t know what’s more remarkable about the poems in Of Whiskey and Winter, their exquisite music or their startling, acrobatic leaps. By turns manic and contemplative, zany and wise, his rollicking poems have the power to simultaneously challenge, illuminate and praise the illusive character of the world.”—Gary Young

Peter Conners lives in Rochester, New York, and is an editor for BOA Editions, Ltd.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Peter Conners' stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again." -- Naomi Shihab Nye. "I don't know what's more remarkable about the poems in Of Whiskey and Winter, their exquisite music or their startling, acrobatic leaps. By turns manic and contemplative, zany and wise, his rollicking poems have the power to simultaneously challenge, illuminate and praise the illusive character of the world." -- Gary Young.

About the Author

Peter Conners is founding co-editor of Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction. He also edited PP/FF: An Anthology which was published by Starcherone Books in 2006. He works as Editor and oversees marketing for BOA Editions. Peter Johnson is the founding editor of the Prose Poem: An International Journal and in addition to his three books of prose poems he is the author of I'm A Man, a book of short stories also published by White Pine Press. Raised in Buffalo, NY he currently teaches at Providence College in Providence, R.I.

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: White Pine Press; First Edition edition (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893996891
• ISBN-13: 978-1893996892
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,229,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Conners is author of the memoir, Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead (Da Capo Press, 2009). His new book, White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg, was published by City Lights in November 2010. He is currently at work on an oral history of jam and festival bands titled JAMerica to be published by Da Capo Press in fall 2013.

His other books include the prose poetry collection Of Whiskey and Winter and the novella Emily Ate the Wind. His next poetry collection, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees, is forthcoming from White Pine Press in spring 2011. He is also editor of PP/FF: An Anthology which was published by Starcherone Books in April 2006. He lives in Rochester, New York where he works as Publisher of the not-for-profit literary press BOA Editions.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking Deeper..., December 11, 2007

By 

Glenn Raucher (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Of Whiskey and Winter (Paperback)

(Peter Conners read as part of the visiting author series at the Writer's Voice on December 7, 2007. This is from my introduction to his reading)

Peter Conner's poems in "Of Whiskey and Winter" have a wonderful way of communicating strangeness, displacement, through precise yet unorthodox choice and placing of words within each poem. His poems often have a remarkable stillness to them, giving the reader time to look around once inside their world, and really breathe the poems in. He has a way in finding beauty in struggle, and at the same time celebrating being in the moment, whether in trying to survive a northern winter, or coming to terms with our own mortality. In "Certified Alive" he combines the two, and writes of a year's passing "each spring I emerge thicker with bear weight. My hair grows, my waist, my growl a truer lament."

Here, as elsewhere in "Of Whiskey and Winter," he writes of our direct, oft-unrealized connection to the natural world, to being something that like everything else we come in contact with, is terribly impermanent.

And he approaches it all with a sense of wonder, of delight. This is reflected both in his language, with its lovely mis-directions, questions becoming answers and then turning back on themselves, and even in celebrating the clarity of madness, of absolutely not having yourself grounded, prepared for what's next. Peter has a way of placing us immediately in the moment, and then being perfectly willing to disorient us, to explode the familiar, to use the strangeness and odd juxtapositions within these poems to alter our sense of where we are.

"Of Whiskey and Winter" grapples with the distance between our reach--our dreams--and our grasp--our hard realities. Like the title of the poem "The Thing Behind the Other Thing," Peter's poems invite us to look a little deeper, consider a little more, identify that which is not readily apparent, but requires our utmost involvement. Both is these poems, and in our lives.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Need more from this author, August 16, 2007

By 

Stephen Kennedy Robinson (SF) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Of Whiskey and Winter (Paperback)

Peter Conners unique voice is both bold and sensitive. You get taken into a tender moment of a father with his young son; but you'll also bust out laughing at his unique take on a trip to the doctor for an annual physical; and in the end you'll feel his unspoken realizations about what small things can mean in the larger sense. What I love the most is that this isn't just a collection of individual poems. They fit together and guide you through seasons of nature and life. I can't wait to read more.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TOP CURRENT WORKS OF ART, August 9, 2007

By 

Todd Weiner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Of Whiskey and Winter (Paperback)

This book is fantastic, I just got my copy last week and I've been just engrossed! If you're looking for something special, this will do it! Peter Conners writes with such a unique flare and vibrancy that I can't say enough about it- I can't wait to read more from him!!!