The Art of Mercy : New and Selected Poems

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."