The Art of Mercy

"Robert L. Penick's short, masterful poems have been showing up in small press magazines since the early 1990s. The Art of Mercy, his first full-length collection, contains excerpts from four chapbooks, as well as fifty-seven new and previously uncollected poems. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Penick is a true man of the streets, chronicling with clear-eyed sensitivity the ordinary lives of marginalized people, the elderly, the forgotten, the blue-collar workplace, the seductions of alcohol, and the heartbreak of failed relationships.. Written in a straightforward narrative style, with deft use of metaphor, these poems sneak up on you with understated dignity. The 100 poems collected in The Art of Mercy represent the best of a long, quiet career in the poetry trenches"--