Black Angels

In Black Angels, Robert Walicki says, ...men will want to break you, / like they’ve been broken. These poems jackhammer us with compassion, asking over and over: What does it mean to be a man? The haunted details shift from the scarecrow to the dying fish, from Bowie to Prince, as the voice professes its burning love: ...I caught a fish but didn’t / want blood.
—Jan Beatty, author of Jackknife
Like its title, the poems in Robert Walicki’s eagerly awaited full-length book are at once fearless and gentle. Poem after poem, Walicki drops us smack in the middle of a world so familiar yet so singular, then offers his steady hand as he leads us through the harrowing, magical truth about ourselves.
—Heather McNaugher, author of System of Hideouts
What so compels us about Robert Walicki’s Black Angels? Their haunting, numinous voices? The dark and tortured spaces they’ve traveled to reach us? Or is it the fire that surrounds them, sharp and sparking as a cutting torch? Perhaps it’s the intimate, searing messages they bring—of childhood, identity, work and pain, yet also of mercy and “every part of yes.” Whatever it is, these poems are a visitation. They blaze, they shine, and leave an afterimage that lingers on and on.
—Richard St. John, author of Each Perfected Name
In “What the Light Wants” the speaker builds a scarecrow as his sister looks on. He muses, She doesn’t know I’m building a man... This dynamic book of poetry weaves elegy, excavation, and insight together as Walicki mourns a father lost too early and seeks his own blueprint of what it means to be a man. In “Real Men” Walicki exposes the complexity of his search: Real men call you sissy and bitch / quick as a fist bump, a punch in the gut at break... Looking to role models as divergent as Prince, Bowie, Mario Lemieux, and the foremen at his plumbing jobs, Walicki’s poems navigate the treacherous waters between his own sensitivity and the hard-edged stereotypes of manhood in the larger culture. This is an illuminating book full of heart!
—Sharon Fagan McDermott, author of Life Without Furniture