I usually read poetry books in pieces, at whim, leafing through the pages to scan whatever suits my mood of the moment. However, having glanced at the first few pages of “A Goldfinch Instant” by Paul Friedrich, I turned page after page until the very end. It grabbed me and didn’t let go. An artful juxtaposition of prose and haiku keeps tipping the reader back and forth in a kind of emotional mambo. Sweetness and violence pervade the imagery in equal measure. Reminiscences of children and parents, nature and the seasons, little pieces of life and death, all converge to create an emotional geography that matches the varieties of physical geography in the book: Mexico, India, Russia, Paris, and the American locales of Chicago, the Rockies, and the Golden Gate Bridge, among others. The writing is so intense that a sense of near-panic emerges, as if life were too short to contain all of this. And indeed, the most intense experiences appear in the briefer poems, just when the poet seems to promise something of a pause in the action. I even enjoyed reading the endnotes, which explain the poetic references to Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese images, and allusions to T.S. Eliot, Goya, and Durer; these attest to the fact that Friedrich is not only a fine poet but also a great scholar
Donna Pucciani, Wheaton, Illinois
Paul Friedrich, a goldfinch instant: Concord to India Haikus. virtual artists collective, 2010. ISBN 978-0-98198-989-1