What the Gargoyle Sees

What the Gargoyle Sees is a collection of new and selected poems ranging from science fiction and fantasy to myth, horror, and fairy tale retellings.

Flipping perspective and helping us see anew, Gene Twaronite's What the Gargoyle Sees is playfully haunting and hauntingly playful. Full of sincerity and surprise, these poems help us see, "We are each a wholly trinity." Twaronite's formal dexterity delights with multiple meanings and swerves. Here is a world where gallivanting, thankfully, is not dead. What a gift!

TC Tolbert, Tucson Poet Laureate

What the Gargoyle Sees pairs creative settings with a realist's eye-the book is full of moving poems that put Twaronite's contemporary sensibility in settings rooted in myth, history, and invention. From the interstellar to the metaphysical, the poems take their occasions imaginatively-but rarely remain in the imagination alone. Instead, Twaronite melds the fabular with the particulars of lived experience. What the gargoyle truly sees, in the end, is the world we've made. It is what I like most about these poems: the way they start in the ether but find meaning in the heart.

Tyler J. Meier, Executive Director, University of Arizona Poetry Center

From the poignancy of what the gargoyle sees of the children in the war-torn streets below to the magic glow you can experience in four o'clock light when reason gives way to wonder, Gene's poetry can often be surprising and thought-provoking, yet written with an honest simplicity that makes them so enjoyable to read. As the yellow snake says to Gene, "I only wanted to tell [you] a story to live in for a time and forget."

Susan Shell Winston, Editor at NewMyths.com & Author of Singer of Norgondy