The uncanny obstinacy of Colin James’ poems in Resisting Probability lingers like an elusive aftertaste, a sense of raw, stunted assertion and material finality both incomplete and unchangeable. This is we feel how things are, as we settle into the Jamesian groove: whimsical, laconic, gnomic, with a strange resilience of their own no matter how gnarled in form. What feels most solid, though, may not be things themselves, or what is said, but the unsettling edge of silence around them, with a hint of something a little dangerous, but funny too. We learn to take it like it is: “When these are moved / to the center of the room / things don’t improve.”

Notices

“Colin James’ poetical voice creates strange little poem-worlds as if it had hands to do so. The narrator strides, staggers, sings his way through. The surreal and the mundane mix like secret kissing cousins. When the ride is over, and the poem-world is departed, one looks up from the page, mind staggering back into common light, wondering: what just happened? What a weird delight!”

—Raymond Soulard, Jr., editor, Scriptor Press

“Colin’s poetry gives you a look into a world that you don’t see on your own, and its truth makes itself so evident that you can’t look back.”

—Ryan D. Brinkhurst, editor, Literary Heist