COLLISIONS lives up to its title by acting as a literary particle accelerator, slamming two or more things together to see what mysterious energies are released and what enlightenment might be shed by the encounter. There’s a reason Foley’s subtitle describes these pieces as “violences.” Many are poems in the traditional sense, whether formal or free verse (and he is equally adept at both modes). Mixed in, however, are essays, historical notes, cultural commentaries, translations, collaborations, what could almost be called journal entries, and even reviews: the first piece is a magnificent prose poem of praise for Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The poet’s always lyrical voice expertly unifies these disparate elements. Everything becomes poetry when he says it. Underneath the voice, though, is the running theme of consciousness as a chordal phenomenon. There are many Jack Foleys represented here, and every man Jack of them is on a spiritual quest to understand the universe. The journey becomes ours as we read and peer over his shoulder in wonder, like watching an astronaut of the soul step onto a strange new world.

––Kurt Luchs

San Francisco Bay-area poet Jack Foley has published eighteen books of poetry, five books of criticism, a book of stories, and a 1300-page “chronoencyclopedia,” Visions & Affiliations: California Poetry 1940-2005. With his late wife, Adelle, he became known for his multi-voiced “choruses,” a practice he has continued with his new life partner, Sangye Land. He has presented poetry on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA regularly since 1988 and is a host of KPFA’s literary program, “Cover to Cover.” He has received two Lifetime Achievement Awards, one from Marquis Who’s Who and one from the Berkeley Poetry Festival. The city of Berkeley declared June 5, 2010 “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. In addition, he is the first recipient of the K.M. Anthru International Literary Prize from the Kerala, India-based magazine, LITTERATEUR RW. His most recent books are Grief Songs, a book dealing with his sorrow at his wife’s death; When Sleep Comes: Shillelagh Songs, poems ranging from traditional to experimental verse; Duet of Polygon, a collaboration with Japanese poet Maki Starfield; and the companion volumes, The Light of Evening, a brief autobiography, and “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads,” a psychobiography dealing with “the growth of a poet’s mind,” and Creative Death, a book of poems. In 2019, poets/scholars Dana Gioia and Peter Whitfield published Jack Foley’s Unmanageable Masterpiece—a book of essays discussing Visions & Affiliations. Poet Olchar E. Lindsann writes, “Jack Foley’s constantly evolving and exploratory writing has been a mainstay of the American avant-garde for many decades, and his detailed histories of California poetic communities demonstrate an engaged poetic historiography.” In 1994 Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked at the conclusion of Jack’s radio interview with him, “Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco.”