Only Wonder

John Yozzo may be one who comes to mind when you hear

the phrase, “It’s always the quiet ones . . . “ A well-mannered, retired

professor of English, puttering away at his part-time farmhand job,

pedaling his bicycle, writing. Long time married man. Nice guy.

You get the picture. But, that whole scenario takes a refreshing turn when

you see the poems in this collection he calls, Only Wonder. With unexpected

passion, he explores love, deeply, in all its incarnations. Love for familiar

objects, love for one’s mate, and most of all, love for the everyday minutiae

of living on this earth. With his exquisite lyrical expressions he calls us

back to the human capacity that we tend to forget or to put aside when

caught up in “problems.” But, he goes even further. He also cautions against

assuming that love is the easy answer. He reminds us of the hard facts;

that “life was not meant/to be painless/nor the problems/of death solvable/

and that, “life, some Russian/said, was accepting/ the loss of one joy/

after another/so love . . . is no/ archetypical picnic/either.” These poems will

make clear why, in the face of love, we can “only wonder!”