Even in the Slums of Providence (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646626625)

A thoughtful and accessible debut, Even in the Slums of Providence explores elements that define our lives-love, family, work, aging, faith. Through these poems, Larry Pike travels a long arc of experience to appreciation and understanding of the gifts, great and small, we receive: wearing thin a lawn during a neighborhood ball game; dealing with a rugged, worldly coworker on a first job; savoring mint juleps with dear friends; watching a grandmother admire her teenaged grandson on Christmas Eve; mourning a friend's father at a socially-distanced funeral. Readers will find much in their own lives reflected in the emotion and humor of these poems.

Born in Georgia and raised in North Carolina, Pike has lived in Kentucky for forty-five years. The strong Southern emphases on home and place clearly influence his work. He employs a keen eye to enlarge and enliven ordinary events (enjoying ice cream at a sidewalk café), as well as the harrowing (facing a wild, illegal border crossing) and majestic (viewing a nighttime Space Shuttle launch at close range).

Even in the Slums of Providence is a warm, unpretentious collection. It celebrates, sometimes wryly, common occurrences, such as learning to drive, an afternoon at the movies or watching newlyweds hunting for a home on HGTV, going with one's dad to buy dress shoes, and running a routine errand. The poems marvel at special times that connect us to one another and the world around us. They also help us consider critical life questions, like the injustices we incite and endure and our mortality. Even when contemplating difficult themes, these verses reveal a grateful, inquisitive observer happily at work.

The poems are grouped in three sections. The volume begins with "In the Driveway," which won the 2003 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Award, and includes the 2017 George Scarbrough Prize winner, "Wildflower Walk." The book's title comes from a line in the closing poem, "On Seeing the Van Goghs in Chicago." Poems in this collection have appeared in a number of journals, including Better Than Starbucks, Capsule Stories, C sura (web edition), Exposition Review, Fathom Magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, Jelly Bucket and River and South Review, and several anthologies, including Heat the Grease, We're Frying Up Some Poetry and the New York Quarterly Foundation's Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith.