These poems are bright islands in the black of the back-wood highways that still criss-cross our country. They are the thin blue notes of jazz that circulate under the neon signs of all-night diners. And, yes, they are postcard messages across time and space to a simpler and more vital period of American life when a young man might follow his hopes and sensuality forever into a younger country lost in the promise of its destiny. Jack Kerouac put an American landscape of the post Eisenhower years into his own words, making that landscape his own for generations to come—a long scroll into the passions, loves, and loss of our poor small bones. That landscape has now departed and fallen beneath the bulldozers of the most powerful nation in human history…the two lane, three lane, four lane interstate highways scattered in the rubble of superhighways of indifference. But there is a time and space still for postcards to that inner world that Jack wrote of, and our survival as a civil and progressive society may well depend on our ability to write and read those postcards. Albert DeGenova has found the right notes to sing in this volume of the open road.--Jared Smith.
Terse imagery, tightly expressed, and tautologically complete . . . DeGenova weaves his poetic language into poems that are tough. They express what the world needs to hear form the dark shadows and raw alleys of 21st century America. Haibun. Fresh haibun like the off-tune remark getting swiftly punctuated by the soft, warm open palm slap from a scorned woman. Yes, his haibun and short poems are fresh. Expertly wrought and forged form the authentic iron of experience. Postcards to Jack is wonderful. Kerouac would have been jazzed to read them.
--Jeffrey Winke.
