Broken Borders

By John L. Holgerson
Publication Date: January 2012
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Format: Paperback/Hardback/ebook
Size: 8.5 x 5.5
ISBN: 978-1-60047-676-1

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About the Book

Broken Borders by John L. Holgerson is a collection of poems about the broad and varied territories that comprise the landscape of the heart. While these territories define, they can also limit. We know this and, over time, accept the boundaries that have been drawn. Yet, the urge to break these borders and expand the landscape never dissipates completely. It is often very strong. At times, irresistibly so; although we know the price can be high for what we leave behind in a well-established and comfortable province.

Audio Recording by the Author

Dancing Desperado

Don Quixote After Therapy

Fatal Beauty

Into the Garden

Reviews

“Holgerson writes about relationship, with women, with his children, and with a young man on death row……
In his opening poem, Holgerson tells the reader:

………………………, you dance.
Across the room, in the street,
you glide. An escaped kite
rising on crescendo currents,
tugging slave to string of song.

Poetry does allow us to soar like a kite, on the air flow on the words and images that carry us high above the landscape. We rise on that crescendo with the beauty, dip with the melancholy and find freedom in the expansion of metaphor. We are, however, always tethered to the reality that sometimes poetry is just not so pretty. Holgerson gives fair warning to the unwary pedestrian who may be observed without their knowledge:

Do not go so unarmed
among the smiling hunters
Do not listen
to the clever lures
whispered from behind…..

Do not trust us
to repair your heart
We will shackle it
with chains of verse……”

— Rene Schwiesow, Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene, March 11, 2012

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