TUREK'S 24 IN 24 & IMAGISTICS: RESPONSE AND CELEBRATION

NOTE: Click on photos to enlarge  

Ok, so I hope you haven’t yet had enough of me singing J R Turek’s praises, because I’ve got another song for you. And I hope you will join me and the SpoFest crew tomorrow as we celebrate J R’s SpoFest Guest Author appearance and birthday- albeit a few hours early.

Anyway, can you imagine writing poetry for 24 hours without sleep? I can’t really, but J R Turek doesn’t have to imagine. She’s done it three times! By the way, if you have problems with exclamation marks/points, you should probably stop here…and/or check out my position on them here.

I hear the fruit of J R’s most recent 24-in-24 (24 poems in 24 hours) will be gracing bookshelves soon, but what I’ve got for you today are my responses to the collection from her first 24-in-24 effort and to Imagistics: A Collection ofForm and Formed Poetry (2015). The 24-in-24 book is creatively titled, 24 in 24: a poetry marathon collection (2021). She must be a poet! No, I wasn’t stung in the face. That’s my tongue.😏

I’ll leave it to “real” reviewers to “review” J R’s books. Me? I’ll just respond, so don’t expect the typical please. You’ll be disappointed. Despite not wanting another hardcopy book for which I would need to find a safe place to collect dust, I was rather joyous as I walked out of the post office with three more of J R Turek books!

I had finished two already: Midnight on The Eve of Never: poems on the ledge (2019) and A is for Almost Anything: an assortment of poetry (2016). Both have numerous dogeared pages- my method of designating poems I thoroughly enjoyed. And now I had three more collections to peruse- the two I’ll be responding to here, and the third, B is for Betwixt and Between: anassortment of poetry (2018).

If they were audiobooks, I would have had all three finished by now. As it is, I have only made it through one and two-thirds. Given the no sleep in 24 hours thing, I wasn’t sure what to expect when opening 24 in 24. I confess that I was expecting at least a pleasant read, and at most, more wows and putting the book down to pace and ponder with a huge smile on my face. That had been my experience with Midnight and A.😊

Well, it only took until the third hour (each piece has its hour of birth noted) to notch my first dog ear.  After absorbing the first 15 hours of writing, I had dogeared a mere four poems. Wassup J R? You slippin’? A bit tired? Ha! She was sandbagging. I dogeared five of the final nine. The woman apparently got stronger the less sleep she got. I got to the end shaking my head in amazement.

I’ll just share a couple of my favorite pieces, one from the first 12 hours and another from the second. The first, Sutures from hour 8, is a melancholy ode to the healing power of poetry…is anyone more fit to write an ode to poetry than Judy? The second, Forgive Me Muse from hour 21, made me chuckle. It wasn’t easy choosing just two, but I figured a little contrast might be good enough to give you the flavor.

So, 24 in 24 was short, sweet, easy-peasy, and just left me wondering about the tentative correlation between sleep deprivation and creative writing. I need a larger sample size to draw any semblance of a conclusion about that correlation though.

Imagistics was/is an entirely different story. I peeled open the covers of the book with a bad attitude. Coming clean, I wasn’t expecting to care for it much. In my mind, it was going to be all about the visuals, and I’m more partial to meaning than visuals. Ha! Good thing I don’t mind being wrong.

Not only was I surprised that the visuals were enjoyable, but there was more than enough meaning to satisfy my thirsty mind. In most cases, the combination of image and word made the piece for me. I kept tripping over pieces in wordy wonder, admiring not just the word images but the content!

For example, J R gave us the finger- not that one- in Town Meeting which was cool all on its own, but the poem went on to address something silly…like civility among human beings. Seriously Judy? I guess poetry can be a form of fiction…and you don’t have to stand in line to get poetic license. I couldn’t believe how many pieces made me smile and wish I was as creative.

I finished Design, and exclaimed, “How cool is that!” Granted, it was probably a relatively quiet exclamation, but it felt loud. And I sure had a good time with the music of Rhap-city Blues (click link for audiovisual rendition). Yep, there are many pieces to delight both eye and mind, and I have no qualms about suggesting you pick this book up for your unadulterated enjoyment.   

It's going to take me a while to sit with and finish Betwixt and Between, but you’re probably oversaturated with Turek talk by now anyhow. I can't wait to get to darrell parry's Twists: Gathered Ephemera and Christopher Bogart's This Conversation. Both promise to be moving...though in significantly different ways. There I go with those expectations again 🤔.