Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 90
- Language: English
- Date Published: March, 2019
- ISBN 978-1-948017-35-0
Praise
“…Lucien Zell’s poems are highly original and invoke no obvious influence or origin that one can think of elsewhere. Sharp phrases each carry a single image or impression, each different as if from a dream or sudden revelation. Often the visual or emotional impression invoked goes off in a surprising direction. Surprise is perhaps the key word to describe the reader’s reaction when reading his work…” —John Calder
From Prague (a city he calls “Threshold”) comes the gnomic verse of the expatriate American poet Lucien Zell. The old alchemists would recognize what Zell is up to: the transformation of base materials (simple words, direct images) into spiritual gold. The result is what he calls “The extraordinary bliss to be found in the ordinary.” Kafka too would surely understand. —Norman Finkelstein
I admire people who master words… like birdmen of old, Papagenos, the piedpipers – you play your magic flute and words simply follow you. I take my hat off to you Lucien, your words follow you all around the world… —Peter Sis
Tiny Kites confirms Zell as a master of juxtaposition. These poems are unsettling in their simplicity: a series of thoughts that slap you ever so gently with images that remain long after the book has been closed. —Neil McCarthy
Excerpt
V.
Don’t not go to the home of your beloved
because you’re not sure what you’ll say when you get there.
When you get there, you won’t need to say a word.
Your journey is your message.
Author
Born in LA, based in Prague, Lucien Zell lives at the edge “because that’s where the views are.” The author of four poetry collections, two novels, two children’s books and over a hundred songs, Zell elects for the relative anonymity of life in European exile, preferring the luxury of blurry time and diffuse self-reflection to that of shiny cars and sharp clothes. The proud father of four exceptional children (fathered in three countries), Zell has performed his anti-Nazi (‘Not See’) salute of repopulating the Jews of Europe. To the shame of over-commercialized presses and editors, after twenty-five years of exile, Tiny Kites is Zell’s first American book.
Find Lucien’s photos on Howling Eye and his other work on Patreon.