Sky Brightly Picked

Sky Brightly Picked is Jess Mynes's first full length collection. Rooted in the poet's responses to the work of Mark Rothko and the landscape of rural Massachusetts, these concise, witty, and deftly worked poems bring us 'other / kinds of knowing'. Possessed of a fresh and distinctive style, Jess Mynes shows in this book that he knows instinctively how to 'give a line muck / to sense about'. Sky Brightly Picked accumulates. An irreducible hope for exact details. Striations of seasonal light, prismic silence. We come up everyday, down to emotional registers. Both colors made comforting unsure. Contrast and the coming thought. Life constantly and less predictable – something beautiful I made. Mind's never made so there's only that engaged totally personal Something I think Rothko intended. Gaps filled in but nevertheless Intended. Jess does that. His poetry isn't invasive, it's well-informed. Moments made externally visible. Without the voiceover. Just kind of fair. And exceptional. Nothing more than what the frame wants to be next to it, openly. Optics, Emotions, and Transfer. We all cope with the uncomfortable results of not quite working through it, but our joy in persisting exists – or never quite does – it’s something you forget in the city. More things on uneasy streets. Your conscience’s unsaid disappointments. Sleepy places of mild success. Hey we have those mornings some nights. Not sad joy nor comforting faces. But to live more deeply than contextual others. Experience is a deep thing in art we forget. Deep feeling. To rely on ability. And maybe do it sometimes. – John Coletti Irrepressible, that urge to form the irreducible poem. Jess Mynes has my sympathy, my admiration. – Clark Coolidge