Everything We Call Ordinary

In praise of "Everything We Call Ordinary"

These monologues tell of a hard life on the edges of 21st Century America. There's no mistaking their pain and bad luck, but there's also no mistaking the occasional flashes of wonder lighting up this tattered landscape, with its check-cashing agencies, dollar movies and laundromats. Miracles that comprise a well-lived life.

Joseph Millar, Poet, Author of "Overtime and Blue Rust"

In "Everything We Call Ordinary," Mark Heinlein's prose poems resonate with distinctive voice and vision. The narrator, a bit clumsy, a bit out of place "in a borrowed suit, which tugs across my back," searches for a handhold in the day-to-day routine of his life. Heinlein's introspection reveals that what seems empty, tarnished, or broken forms the cracks through which we glimpse extraordinary grace and the sweet small miracles that comprise a well-lived life. Anything but ordinary.

Sally Ashton, Poet, Author of "Some Odd Afternoon" and "Her Name is Juanita"

Mark Heinlein is a modern-day Everyman. Through him we see the challenges and joys, the frustrations, despair, and small victories of our lives. He captures the rhythms of thought, the common, odd and tender details, and delivers moments that are arresting, poignant, memorable. He shows us "the full catastrophe." These poems are like potato chips--I couldn't stop reading.

Ellen Bass, Poet, Author of "The Human Line" and "Mules of Love"

Mark Heinlein's enthralling first book is a marvel of close observation and narrative nuance. The margin-to-margin lines of his poems stretch the seemingly mundane moments of life wide open, amplifying the hidden rhythms of our daily travails with an extraordinary intensity, making them luminous and indelible, "filled with...light, and more light."

Alan Soldofsky, Poet, Author of "In the Buddha Factory"