Peter J. Harris’s “SongAgain”

I designed the cover and typeset the interior of Beyond Baroque’s powerful new poetry collection from Peter J. Harris. The cover of SongAgain features the painting Transformation by Robin Strayhorn.

SongAgain by Peter J. Harris

AVAILABLE @ BOOKSHOP.ORG + OTHER BOOKSELLERS

Paperback | 106 pages | October 2022
Published by Beyond Baroque Books, Venice, Calif.

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FROM THE BACK COVER

For decades now, Peter J. Harris's voice has mesmerized his readers and listeners. He moves us with his words and his presence, his dignity and his vulnerability, with his truth-telling and the way he can spin a tale, turning narrative into song, lyric into incantation. And here he is, doing it again in SongAgain—a most powerful and beautiful collection of poems.

“Peter J. Harris is our bridge to Sterling Brown’s blues and James Brown’s soul. He is our bridge between troubadour and trouble man. Over troubled waters, he is our bridge wired with moonlight and house speakers. He writes, ‘touch me with your dance’ in this dynamic body of work, ‘this body full of impatient Cha cha cha,’ ‘Mahalia’s choppy handclaps,’ ‘slow drag sambas’ and ‘mother’s last call illuminating dusk.’ SongAgain is the mature, moving music of one of our original gangsters for truth, love and poetry.” —Terrance Hayes

“An irrepressible joy leaps from the pages of Peter J. Harris’ tour de force SongAgain. The marriage of his love & care for language (‘welcome to my house built with talk’) with folklore, mythology, and perceptivity is a happy marriage indeed. Harris need not worry about legacy—a theme that recurs in his poems and prose; we readers will be the astonished witnesses to ‘the unsealing soon come’ . . . .” —Lynne Thompson

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