Small Sovereign

<p> In Small Sovereign his second full-length collection poet Michael Favala Goldman draws on experience as a remodeling carpenter a jazz musician a Danish translator a gardener and a parent to draw us into greater awareness of life's minute pains and victories from numerous points of view. We are all sharing atoms at least/.../like the sea mixes with the sky/words do not keep them apart. The poems explore the paradox of personal power and powerlessness using everyday experience as a door to the universal. The organization has its priorities/which do not include delight.</p><p>  </p><p>Goldman invites the reader to join him in mundane and transformational experiences such as picking up a hurt elk walking by a train-car diner riding an escalator touring fields of Verona making soup for a sick friend gluing a broken table and choosing flooring. All that separates you/from your surroundings/is your imagination/of yourself being who you are.</p><p>  </p><p>The poems of Small Sovereign are short direct ironic touching and get richer with multiple readings. don't expect me to stand in the way/I'm small everywhere/except in my little life/where I am a clumsy giant/trying desperately not/to destroy my own city.</p><p>  </p><p>As a collection the poems inhabit the space between the material world and emotion-based relationships placing ourselves starkly in this gap with the responsibility for bridging it amid progress and failures: it's almost too much growing/a love that consumes everything.</p><p> </p>