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The Place of the Solitaires: Poems from Titles by Wallace Stevens
“John Surowiecki uses Stevens’ titles as a bird might use the tip of a branch, to spring more effortlessly into flight. These poems are finely nuanced meditations and lyric evocations. The Stevens title may remain as a wind that inflects the course of the poem which follows, but Surowiecki is clearly steering these poems to his own will and whim. The memories, the people, the daily incidents and accidents are all Surowiecki’s, all rendered with graceful phrasings and the profound engagement of a poet who knows ‘what thoughts have escaped him / and flown away—fly away still— / never rooted in speech’.”
—James Finnegan, former Poetry Editor, The Wallace Stevens Journal
Grayson Books, 2021
Burger King of the Dead
Early in John Surowiecki’s Burger King of the Dead, the narrator of “I am a Comic Book” describes growing up as a boy of steel and being in love with every woman on earth. Other narrators adore birds, gardening, and eccentrics—like the itinerant preacher Lorenzo Dow and the mental patient who helps a family grow the biggest Big Boy tomatoes. Mobsters also memorize Milton, Zeus writes emails from Florida, and Roy Lichtenstein puts in a cameo appearance. Burger King of the Dead is by turns enchanting and elegiac, but also wickedly witty and unfailingly musical; Surowiecki tosses off gorgeous lines so casually you’d think they were a dime a dozen. This book will break your heart, if you let it. —Katherine E. Young, author of Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards
Pie Man 2017
Southeast Missouri State Univ. Press, 2017
– winner of the The Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel
“The novel is a reminder that the greatest act of love is to make room for people who are strange and inexplicable—who are, after all, you and me and everyone. The novel is a reminder that the greatest act of love is to make room for people who are strange and inexplicable—who are, after all, you and me and everyone. ” —Michael Downs
Encircle Publications, 2017
Martha Playing Wiffleball in Her Wedding Dress
“This book of quirky and deeply human voices also stuns us in poem after poem with an exhilarating play of language, pathos, and wit.” —George Drew
“crisp, evocative, musical lines” where “we see the wonder and pathos of ordinary life—and extraordinary lives.” —Stephen Campiglio
Encircle Publications, 2015
Missing Persons – winner of Encircle Publications 2015 (5th Annual) Chapbook Contest
John Surowiecki is one of our bravest and most humane poets. He is a master of of the elegy, and his considerable talents are on display in Missing Persons, a chapbook that echoes with the music of other lives—lively mazurkas and lonely soprano solos alike. —Shelley Puhak
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012
Flies or, the Last Days, D___h and Putrefaction of Mr. Sam Jeden as Narrated by 8 Generations of Musca Domestica
A study of old age and loneliness from a fly’s perspective.
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011
Mr. Z., Mrs. Z., J.Z., S.Z.
A compilation of poems about the Z. family from John’s three books; contains original poems as well, including “Playing Miniature Golf with J.Z. after Helen Left Him for a Merchant Marine: A Poem in Eighteen Holes.”
CW Books, 2010
Barney and Gienka
“…John Surowiecki takes the gyroscope of illness and sets it to a slow, sad spin that is both beautiful and wrenching.”—Sandra Beasley
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008
Further Adventures of My Nose
Out of print.You can read an online version at Ugly Duckling Presse
“A gutsy chapbook about a terrifying illness by a skilled and humane poet” —Laurie Rosenblatt
WordWorks, 2006
The Hat City After Men Stopped Wearing Hats
“We read Suroweicki’s poems and are necessarily
bewitched… ” —George Drew
White Pine Press, 2003
Watching Cartoons before Attending a Funeral
“He ‘lowers a lens’ and we see what has been there all along, so self-evident yet willfully avoided” —C.D. Wright