Announcement
Returning with new book news and a review
Due to numerous other projects, I have neglected this space for too long. I appear to have a attracted a number of new followers, so I’m returning with an announcement of my new collection Smells Like Rain, from Sligo Creek Press.
Noted D.C. poet, author, teacher, and literary organizer Chloe Yelena Miller was kind enough to write a review:
Gregory Luce’s poetry collection, Smells Like Rain, opens with the poem “Subway Impromptu.” The word impromptu suggests a casual musical moment; the following poems give the reader a deceptively casual, welcoming entrance into a well-examined world.
Gregory Luce breaks the extremes of chaotic noise and solitude into smaller, bearable pieces. In “No Escape,” he writes “because the world is too much / it crowds in with …” and he lists the sounds, “mobs” and “solitude.” There’s sound in almost all of his poems – musicians and music, storms, earlier poets, laugher and loved ones’ voices.
My favorite poem in the collection was one composed entirely of questions, “Weldon Kees Walks to the Golden Gate.” The poem ends with, “Do you still / have a heart to break? / Could you break it yourself / if you had to?”
After surviving a nearby tornado in “Tornado Year,” the narrator remembers, “and just like that it / all stopped, the sun / came out like nothing / happened.” Terror’s rush and then the sun’s incongruence is the transition Gregory Luce records and allows us to feel ourselves in, as we might in life. Readers can recognize themselves in these emotional moments.
Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and writing teacher in Washington, D.C. She co-founded Brown Bag Lit, an online writing community, with Shasta Grant. She’s the author Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and the forthcoming poetry collection, Perforated, from Lily Poetry Review Books (2026).
http://www.chloeyelenamiller.com
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Thanks, Chloe! Check out Chloe’s work at one of the above sites.
Here’s a sample poem that seems especially timely now.
Buy Smells Like Rain here:
Congratulations, Greg. Looking forward to reading it.