Black Forest Dreams

This is a joyous collection, taking joy in the sun on the Rhine and in the "big red table umbrella dripping down on all sides"; in "droplets of sweat slipping to the parched ground" and in ships sailing "like sugar cubes through molasses"; in a boy in a red Alpine hat and a grandfather with a mandolin. The poems travel through the Black Forest, but they also travel through four generations-generations who, in the poems of this book, are lovingly connected.

Janet Burroway, Pulitzer Prize Nominated Novelist, author of Imaginative Writing and Raw Silk?

If you want a rich taste of travel, an excursion into the Black Forest, a cruise down the Rhine, and can't afford the ticket or the time, let Joe Carey guide you with his beautifully observed, loving travel poems to the places you might go if you could, in his Black Forest Dreams. The poems are wise, clear, and exhilarating.

Steve Katz, author of The Exaggerations of Peter Prince, Saw and Moving Parts

These poems form a travelogue of a family tracing its genealogy, studying its roots. It's a collection of passionate images of a beautiful country. Food, art, music, life-all of the memories of a trip to Germany, the poet's ancestral home. Written in free verse with lots of comparative language, these poems are a tribute to a heritage and a country, passionate and beautifully written-a pleasure to read.

Emily-Jane Hills Orford, award-winning Canadian author