The Green Piano

Janine Pommy Vega writes with quiet command of her life and times and of our shared American present. Here are protests against the depravities of the prison system, political poems grounded in closely observed human particulars. Here too are tender lyrics about family, lovers, and friends; celebrations of the natural and domestic worlds of upstate New York; and remarkably vivid letters home from spiritual sojourns through Italy, Germany, and the former Yugoslavia. “Vega’s poems reflect a deeply felt and aching knowledge. They ‘go’ (as Kerouac said) their own patient, unadorned, and dignified way,” wrote Publishers Weekly of her previous collection, Mad Dogs of Trieste.