Welcome Distractions: Accessible Poems for Time-Strapped Humans

“The towers fall and Mary Tyler Moore tosses her beret into the air,” says Wierzbicki in “9/11 Paradox.” Paradoxes like “inertia drives the working masses” inhabit these poems. Wierzbicki constantly puts her finger on the workings of societal insanities so institutionally ingrained they cannot be questioned. There can be no reasonable dialogue because, as she puts it in “Age,” we are in a place “where we all speak different languages and yet push the same buttons.” The experience of reading this book is crucial for our times; the poems are a cagily “accessible” balm for what ails us. — Stephen Paul Miller, author of any lie you tell will be the truth (Marsh Hawk Press)

Wierzbicki successfully challenges the notion of what poetry is as she generously takes us to its core/essence. In this three-part collection, whether they are socio-politically charged poems, odes to the borough she lives in, poems written for her parents & her friends or for music she loves, the brilliant accuracy of her viewpoint, where she stands, & the direct humane manner in which she uses language is her strength & grace. Be ready to open your mind/heart fully to get poetically distracted! — Yuko Otomo, author of STUDY & Other Poems on Art (Ugly Duckling Presse) and KOAN (New Feral Press)

There are plenty of anti-establishment writers who present themselves as wild rebels raging outside the system, or who tell tales about marginalized characters. Wierzbicki’s work offers a more bitter and more accurate takedown of many of the mainstream’s hollow idols and ideas. The deft conclusion of her ruminations is a sense of earned sadness about the tiny shifts people make to preserve a single shred of dignity in the corporate landscape, shown with such measured compassion in “Letter to a Security Guard.” — Jim Feast, author of Neo Phobe and Long Day, Counting Tomorrow (Autonomedia)

ISBN: 9781570273360
Paperbound, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 114 pages, $15.95