Poetry. “The pace too quickened to be a flaneur’s, the passion too corporeal to seem the eye of a camera. Jon Curley’s latest book of poems, Scorch Marks, is a visceral shout-out, a call—as much prayer as dare—to those who would acquiesce by keeping virtual or literal pen in pocket, in the face of injustice and lies. In ‘Spirit Notebook,’ the poet asks, ‘What is my responsibility in the crowded valley of words?’ The question is neither glib nor disingenuous. Curley does not care to fuck around worrying if a reader will find these poems too stark and starkly mad—deranged by grief, or, colloquially, by anger. Scorch Marks‘ poems cut, jab, and yearn. It is a yearning that refuses to give in or give way.”—Elena Alexander