Description:
"These lively, imaginative poems make for easy reading. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes profound, but always unpunctuated, they range in reference from Norman Rockwell to Carl Jung and celebrate what one poem's title calls 'Mundane Excitement.' Not all wood-choppers are connoisseurs of firewood, but Ken Letko is."
-Clemens Starck, author of Cathedrals & Parking Lots
Brief description: Originally from the Chequamegon Bay area of Northern Wisconsin, Ken Letko now lives in the redwoods of Del Norte, California's northernmost coastal county. He has taught writing at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, the Xian Foreign Languages Institute (now the Xian International Studies University) in the People's Republic of China, and College of the Redwoods, in Crescent City, California. Bright Darkness, published by Flowstone Press in 2017, is his first full-length book. His Web site is https: //www.kenletko.com/.
Review Quotes:
"When most of us retreated from the outside world in 2020, we had time to step back, to contemplate, to mourn, and to hope. Ken Letko's poems explore the range of this experience, filtering the external world through interior contemplation. From the candor of loneliness in 'My Shield of Shadows': '...without/disappointments/some days I'd have/no appointments at all, ' to the celebration of a solitary moment in the forest, 'the deer/become ferns/next to red alders' ('Bright Angel'), these poems encourage us to look deeper into our everyday experiences of the world, to move into a space of hopefulness, and breathe again."
-Kris Bigalk, author of Enough and Repeat the Flesh in Numbers