With Our Baggage
by Alan Berecka
Berecka offers observations in a kind of how-to for carrying our assorted baggage with grace. The range of subjects is vast, from baseball heroes to the failures of fathers, from being a poet to being Polish in South Texas, from God's radio to American machismo, but the real subject here is the human animal in its many glorious strivings and bumbling failures. The result is a vision of the world as a strange, funny, beautiful place. Though Berecka's poems are sometimes hilarious, tongue-in-cheek, and satiric, they are also painful, poignant, and bittersweet. These varied poems offer the reader a touching human response to incursions of the holy into everyday life.
Order from any bookstore, local or online. This title is also available from Fleur Fine Books of Galveston, Texas.
About the Author
Alan Berecka is a reference librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. His poetry has appeared in American Literary Review, Texas Review, Ardent, Windhover, Slow Trains, Christian Century, San Antonio Express and Red River Review. His chapbook, Each Man Has One Life, was published by Trilobite Press in 2004. His first full-length collection, The Comic Flaw, was published by neoNuma Arts in 2009. His second collection, Remembering the Body, was published in 2011 by Mongrel Empire Press. His latest collection, With Our Baggage, was published in July of 2013 by Lamar University Press.