We at Redhawk Publications bid a sad adieu to poet Bart Solarczyk.
Bart has been an important member of the Redhawk output since the early days of the press. He was always genial and easy to please. He allowed a first year graphic arts student to design his second book for us Carried Where We Go, and his excitement over the book sent the student over the moon with confidence in her art.
Bart was what we like to call "a good guy." A classic American. A classic poet. A classic friend. A damned good poet.
Even as he lay in the hospital doing edits with his friend Scott Silsbe on the book you hold now, Bart was excited over the work. He thought the cover hilarious. But we knew that "dusty pigeons" had a deeper meaning than the absurd image the words conjure; people who keep and nurture pigeons on rooftops in large cities often suffer from "pigeon lung" a malady brought about from the dander and detritus from the flocks. But these folks love their birds, just as Bart loved poetry and art. He suffered for it, as most artists do.
You do not practice poetry to get wealthy. In fact, if you get a few dollars for a six-pack, you're lucky.
However, Bart kept on. Even as he passed, he knew he'd have a new collection of poems--old & new--for you and us to enjoy, treasure, and weep through.
We here at Redhawk Publications thank you, Gentle Reader, for supporting art and our program.
Keep Bart in your heart for a while.
-Robert Canipe, Publisher
Bart Solarczyk pulls no punches in his candid final collection, Dusty Pigeons. With language that's both terse and beautiful, Solarczyk explores the fleetingness of life with its attendant loneliness and pain. Yet, he still makes room for joy. "[A]long the way, if you're lucky / there's some poems," he writes. We're lucky to have his poems. They'll break your heart, but in that breaking, you'll know the humanness of Solarczyk's work-unguarded, honest, and real.
-Jen Ashburn, author of The Light on the Wall
The poems in Bart Solarczyk's final collection, Dusty Pigeons, find the poet "sucking hope," trying his best to discover beauty in every moment and every day, no matter if he's addressing Baudelaire, Kerouac, Keith Richards, or his beloved late wife Tami. His poems are small treasure to light our way, "a blessing blown through [his] grinning beard"-even those edged with despair. Like an ancient haiku master, Solarczyk beckons readers to endure, the way "the heart endures to the final beat."
-Jason Irwin, author of The History of Our Vagrancies
In his latest poetry collection Dusty Pigeons, Bart Solarczyk hints at the journey of this book with the last line of the second poem, "the small things light the way." I look through the kaleidoscope of a life well lived, the images turning. Love, pain, grief, joy, loneliness mingle as I turn the pages. There are moments the kaleidoscope cracks open and I see clearly parts of myself, people I know. He weaves so few words deftly and I'm left speechless. It is a privilege to spend time with him in these pages.
-Chandra Alderman, friend
"And so the party ends" writes Bart Solarczyk, but thankfully none of us need go home. Here among these Dusty Pigeons we can savor a pint, a pipe, and the company of one of the truly great poets. Exuberant and sad, pissed-off and plain-spoken, Solarczyk's work sings off the page, throws a rough arm around your shoulder, and walks you out into the unknowable night. What a gift to have one more round of poems from a master. What a gift to have more time in the company of my friend.
-Kristofer Collins, Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine, Founder of Low Ghost Press, and author of his most recent poetry collection, Roundabout Trace
