Ilan Mochari's Blog
February 24, 2026
PLAYTHINGS now available!
I'm excited to announce that my poetry collection, Playthings, is now available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.
“Ilan Mochari’s voice in Playthings is exquisite in its range, its responsiveness, its singing. These are poems to be savored and read many times,” says award-wining poet Richard Hoffman,
Author of People Once Real and Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College. “Whether he is writing about trees native to Mexico, spiders native to his bathroom, or memories native to boyhood, his engagement with the world delivers poems that praise and lament, remember and contemplate. Several are small masterpieces: ‘Playthings,’ ‘Fiancé, Fiancée,’ and ‘Weekday City’ are jewels. What a treasure. What a pleasure.”
“With lush imagery driven by precision subtext, Ilan Mochari’s Playthings astounds. It is a bounty of music, forms, and lyric and narrative beauty,” said Quintin Collins, author of Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal’s Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Honor Book for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s 2023 Best Poetry Literary Award.
“In Playthings, Ilan Mochari offers the natural world not as a retreat or possession, but as a charged field of presence—intricate, resilient, and often overlooked,” said Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest and Those Absences Now Closest.
“Ilan Mochari’s voice in Playthings is exquisite in its range, its responsiveness, its singing. These are poems to be savored and read many times,” says award-wining poet Richard Hoffman,
Author of People Once Real and Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College. “Whether he is writing about trees native to Mexico, spiders native to his bathroom, or memories native to boyhood, his engagement with the world delivers poems that praise and lament, remember and contemplate. Several are small masterpieces: ‘Playthings,’ ‘Fiancé, Fiancée,’ and ‘Weekday City’ are jewels. What a treasure. What a pleasure.”
“With lush imagery driven by precision subtext, Ilan Mochari’s Playthings astounds. It is a bounty of music, forms, and lyric and narrative beauty,” said Quintin Collins, author of Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal’s Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Honor Book for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s 2023 Best Poetry Literary Award.
“In Playthings, Ilan Mochari offers the natural world not as a retreat or possession, but as a charged field of presence—intricate, resilient, and often overlooked,” said Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest and Those Absences Now Closest.
July 5, 2025
Announcing: Playthings
Just a quick shout-out to everyone on Goodreads who's been with me since the Zinsky the Obscure days.
My next book, a poetry collection called Playthings, is due out in February from Finishing Line Press. I'll be sharing more details here in the weeks to come!
