Synopsis "The Inner Life of Comics"
There is a bone-deep weariness to this new collection of poems by Paul Juhasz. It's theweariness we've all survived after a year and more of isolation during the pandemic, but Paul'sis deeper, his borne of a life fractured in middle age, of love found, then lost, of endings andnew, tentative beginnings. There is also something I think of as classic Paul humor, an ability toface the worst that life throws at you and make a joke of it. Stare the hangman down, then makehim laugh, right before he pulls the lever.But there's more. Though darkness, "the bear," always lurks (source, Paul reveals to us, of allgreat comedy), he has discovered in this collection something much finer than that, themysterious thing we call poetry. There are lines in these poems, prose and lineated, of surpassingbeauty. There are moments in these lines, in these poems, when the comic rests and the poettakes over, and we find ourselves mesmerized and lifted into a kind of peace that lets us knowPaul has travelled through the darkness and come out on the other side full of truths and beautiesthat sustain long after the laughter fades.--Hank Jones, author of Too Late for Manly Hands
