Tom Driscoll

The Ramifications

Arts & Literature

“These are serious poems by a poet who is enigmatic and playful, as in the first poem, ‘Alternative Route’—’Saint John the Baptist Church sits, / modest and quieter than the Evangelist.’ Consider the opening lines of ‘Prestidigitation’—’My odor of naivety drew the pork-pie-hat man.’ The odor of naivety pervades, and the reader is pulled beneath the surface of ‘The sea wrack,’ ‘skin, a rind thin,’ ‘prophecy from fantasy,’ to the underworld. John Zedolik’s often ponderous poems, when pondered, are wondrous.”