How I Learned to Learn New Things by Daniel Pereyra

“there is this plant,/I think it may be a weed/but no one has told it,//reaching toward the laughing sun./,” Daniel Pereyra writes in his new collection, How I Learned to Learn New Things, and most often tenderly, benevolently, occasionally bewilderingly, he acts as our guide-translator through a landscape, both natural and emotional, previously foreign to him, and remarkably, radical in its integrity to the reader. This is a book replete with decent, shareable truths. Steaming desert rains are succor to ravenous flora; a toddler, swinging legs on a slight bench in the breeze, delivers insights irrefutable and timeless; a lover so precious that between she and the speaker, even in a desert’s sweltering heat, thrives sharing “ice cream//in summer.//vanilla spoonfuls/though i know you prefer…./” In How I Learned…, Pereyra delivers us to that steady, jeweled district of fresh responsibility, to appreciate anew the singularly cunning lessons of the world we inhabit, and of which we must dutifully share.

–Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow

“Each time I read Daniel Pereyra’s poems, my heart awakens and feels itself more alive. Mr. Pereyra’s poetry conveys the human experience with warmth and truth. His voice is hopeful but not naïve. His imagery, diction, and details have a quiet power: in “constant questioning,” for example, the narrator sits beside a “cup of cold coffee,” “questioning the way/it tastes like yesterday/despite today’s cream and sugar.” These are poems that you will want to read more than once.”

–Elaine Lux, Ph.D., Professor of English, Nyack College

“Danny Pereyra accomplishes the supreme goal of every poet, seemingly mundane moments–from stubbing your toe to watering plants to hanging a tire swing under a mesquite–become magical, infused with meaning. In this collection of poems even a cold cup of coffee becomes a revelation. This book is a journey into such subtle and often wondrous revelations. In my case, every single time I finished a poem and looked around to my surroundings there was a rich, relaxed moment. I knew I was seeing the world a little differently, and even–I must admit–a little more tenderly.”

–Todd Miller, Journalist and author