Peter Joseph Gloviczki’s the weight of dandelions explores each moment to discover its essence. Believing there is beauty (and humor) in the everyday world, he declares in one poem: “queen-size bed / the dog lets me / sleep there too” recognizing the relationship between animals and their humans. The speaker in these haiku and senryu poems also wonders about the passing seasons and worries about the balance between permanence and impermanence around the world. Gloviczki further examines growth and loss, writing in another poem: “visiting his grave / as always / he listens” as the speaker recalls how relationships sometimes endure beyond one’s earthly life. The depth of the human experience is explored in this collection, which marks Gloviczki’s third book from Salmon Poetry, following 2013’s Kicking Gravity and American Paprika, which appeared in 2016. Within the tight boundaries of each poem, the weight of dandelions invites the reader toward appreciation and affirmation.
“Loneliness and the truth of impermanence seem to be embedded into the project of the haiku, perhaps because the only way one of the greatest practitioners of that form, Matsuo Bashō, could calm his troubled mind was to live on the road and make a pillow of the grass every night. Likewise, Peter Gloviczki is a pilgrim through this life, his eyes and heart wide open, his deep, beautiful poems making us feel tender longing toward all that is passing: moments, seasons, voices, the weathers of the heart-mind, and ourselves.”
Patrick Donnelly
author of Little-Known Operas
