Fisk excels at crafting sadly beautiful poems dealing with marriage, divorce, poverty, childhood, mental health, and physical illness. Fisk deftly shares his stories that bring out hope, love, and resilience despite the dark subject matter. —Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Poet
Sub Urbane is a beautiful collection of micro-observations dealing with grief, friendship, self-reflection, and the personal test of raising a family.
Jason Fisk is a father of three and a teacher to many. He lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last few decades in the Chicago area. For more information check out: www.JasonFisk.com.
I always want poetry to speak to me, to move me, to pinpoint and give words to my existence, but more often than not, I’m left reading a poem, scrunching up my eyebrows, attempting to read it a second time then saying, “Never mind. If they couldn’t get it on the first pass, it’s not there.”
But Fisk’s poetry is there. There’s no eyebrow scrunching only chuckles, heart pangs, heavy sighs and frequent, softly muttered wows.
If you’re tired of poetry and want to see it as it was intended to be, here you go.
This is a short and great collection of poems covering a diverse subject matter. A few that stuck out were ‘Needed Rain,’ ‘The Morning After’ (great form and stanza closing lines), and ‘Something Greater.’ Fisk’s poems are poignant and approachable.