Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems

by Gary Short

Winner of the 1996 Western States Book Award for poetry,  Flying Over Sonny Liston  explores with courage, compassion, and bone-deep wisdom the complicated and sometimes heartbreaking task of being human in the modern West. Whether he writes about the tortuous interior landscape of the family or the abused terrain of the Nevada desert, Gary Short is unfailingly honest, tender, and gifted with a vision for the all-revealing detail, the larger, wrenching truth. Although many of the poems are about death or express a deep and painful anger, the book is about survival. We often find in these poems a movement from the dark into a blazing light of realization that acts as a counter to sorrow, from comprehension to forgiveness, and an awareness that the daunting challenge of being human is won not in loud victories but through the delicate graces of mercy, trust, and hope.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Aedan Lombardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Road trip vibes

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's poetry, one of those dirty pleasures we all claim to like but secretly don't get.

[D. Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Short is a master of the emblematic image and the lean narrative.
Terrific! --D. James Smith