"WITHOUT GHOSTS, THE OBSCURITY OF NIGHT BECOMES REAL"

Delighted and grateful to receive a blurb from Nick Piombino for Prau by Jean Vengua, forthcoming from Meritage Press:

Prau sets forth on its courageous voyage through time and spirit with a meditation on the year 1911, the date of the author's mother's birth, that sails us through the worlds of Mahler, Marie Curie, Moses Browning (who invented the M-1911 Colt 45 to kill intransigent Filipino "moros" in Mindanao), the H - Bomb, Matta, the polymath Rizal, Dapitan and the migratory routes of her father's wandering ukulele. Vengua's poems gently yet firmly navigate us towards yet to be explored spheres of psychological and lyrical revelation where "by turns and in rounds we are angry, indifferent and in love" and "without ghosts, the obscurity of night becomes real." This is page-turner, addictive poetry that never falters in its gaze at the integrity of dream and the dream of integrity.
--Nick Piombino, author of Fait Accompli

Thanks Nick! And I hope Nick's Advance Words, along with Susan Schultz's and Catalina Cariaga's whet your appetite for Jean's long-overdue inaugural poetry book!