“Perhaps the most personal of Paul Stroble‘s poetry books, Small Corner of the Stars gives voice to the everyday mysteries inside us all. This poetry is richly populated and sweet without being the least bit sentimental or cloying. Indeed, the vision here, in spite of and because of its charity, is honest, focused, and always true. You want to know the people in these poems; thanks to Stroble’s marvelous language, you have no choice but to love them.”
–Tom Dukes, author of “Baptist Confidential”
“Paul Stroble has mined his memories of growing up in small-town Illinois to create this delightful collection of poems. We readers experience walking the Nickel Plate rail line as kids and later see the scattered parts of a blue car and hear parents admonish their teens to always ‘look both ways, look again, then look again.’ Stroble takes us inside the mind of a child processing the fears of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and we get to participate in barber shop mirror images, a three-minute call from a phone booth, church on a snowy Sunday, and searches for morel mushrooms. This poet takes us back to the complexities of times we now call simple.”
–Dwight Bitikofer, president, St. Louis Poetry Center and publisher, Webster-Kirkwood Times
Paul Stroble‘s chapbook Small Corner of the Stars begins with an exploration of faith and its complexities, then accompanies the reader on a journey though time to examine the terrain of memory, and the everyday places where heart and mind meet. For any reader who has wished to remap the stars, reinventing constellations as something playful and poignant, Stroble’s collection will delight. Our speaker asks, “Is wisdom’s joy an adventure / one insight and another, connecting / unfolding in your small corner of the stars?” Stroble’s poems address this very notion, sharing glimpses of times in the far and recent past, recreating experiences that ring true to many audiences in their attention to physical and emotional landscape. Nostalgic, but never sentimental, the poems of Small Corner of the Stars prove steadfast companions, reminding us always to “savor / God’s earthy gladness, the flavor of place.”
–Mary Biddinger, author of Small Enterprise
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