Jim Bradley

In 'John Lars Zwerenz The Complete Anthology' a veritable encyclopedia of over 800 pages comprised of the best poetry ever written and assembled in one book, Zwerenz delves into all the major themes, romantic verse, adventure poetry, and other inspired rhyming realms, dark as well as illuminated, he boldly and unapologetically, with all of his advanced literary munitions blazing in full power, decidedly accomplishes a triumphant body of poetic heights never seen before in the annals of the western world. Zwerenz indeed boasts of this reality in the second stanza of the final poem of the volume: .....'And if you could perceive beneath the curtained glow Which beams among glades which frame the sea In the boon of night, in a vein completely In the merit of the verse, I conquered Poe.' - From 'The Christian' Throughout a volume that comes close to a thousand pages, and includes over 700 poems of the most pristine fashions and at the apex of literary perfection, there are no anticlimaxes, and each poem is a work of art within itself. Every segment of verse approaches its theme(s) in different ways, from different angles, and the rich, eclectic wells of varying aesthetic poetic schools from the best of Homer, over the centuries, through The Romantics of the Victorian era, right up to the postmodern period which Zwerenz himself has helped to form. An essential must for any lover of the poetic genre, intellectual or not, academically-oriented or not, we will surely not see another volume of poetry as great as this one beyond our years. Diane Weil, Boston, MA