John Repp
October 201332 pages, paperback
$9.95
ISBN 978-1-935770-09-1
John Repp is a widely published poet who most recently won the prestigious 2013 Akron Poetry Prize. In his new chapbook of stirring poems, Music Over the Water, Repp’s keen sense of the musicality of language and knack for juxtaposing the ephemeral with the everyday moves readers through a poetically crafted landscape ripe with interdependency. Each poem is a meditation on the complex relationships between the self, other humans, and nature.
In Zen-like moments saturated with imagery, Repp explores what occurs when the self, other beings, and the environment collide: “You can see the name of the car/ on the grille beneath the bear’s right paw” he writes of a dead bear in ‘The Bear.’ Repp uses these outer experiences and scenes as sites for self-reflection. Music Over the Water invites readers to discover the splendors and contradictions that exist within the world they inhabit and to celebrate these incongruities through beautifully crafted poetry.
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