Robert L. Penick's short, masterful poems have been showing up in small press magazines since the early 1990s. The Art of Mercy, his first full-length collection, contains excerpts from four chapbooks, as well as fifty-seven new and previously uncollected poems.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Penick is a true man of the streets, chronicling with clear-eyed sensitivity the ordinary lives of marginalized people, the elderly, the forgotten, the blue-collar workplace, the seductions of alcohol, and the heartbreak of failed relationships..

Written in a straightforward narrative style, with deft use of metaphor, these poems sneak up on you with understated dignity.

The 100 poems collected in The Art of Mercy represent the best of a long, quiet career in the poetry trenches.

In Penick's own words:

"This book took forty years of staring out of windows, finding release in booze and borrowed women, and scraping away at an indistinct idea of kindness and deliverance, the way a would-be prison escapee would work on a cement seam, hoping someday to see the daylight on the other side of the wall. Along the way, I've acquired a good command of cliche-less narrative. My major accomplishment: Stamina."

Author: Robert L. Penick
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Hohm Press
Published: 10/15/2023
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781942493907