Books

Coming soon

When Leo Tyler, my longtime friend and pastor, asked me in the summer of 2022 to edit Uninterrupted Love, the literary culmination of a lifetime of deep personal reflection and spiritual revelation, little did I know the surprising discovery awaiting me. Sprinkled through the pages of expository prose were bits of disarming poetry. I remember asking Leo in a casual way about these poems, some of which had obviously been written earlier in his life. Here I was, I thought, veteran former teacher of English and Latin literature, lover of Ars Poetica, stumbling upon an undiscovered poet. “Have you ever considered publishing a collection of your poetry?” I ventured. In response, with his characteristically wide Cheshire grin, Leo opened to me his startling treasure house of lyrical poems that spanned decades of his life.

So began an exhilarating adventure into what Gwendolyn Brooks called “life distilled.” I found myself listening to an authentic voice singing the human experience in all its agony and joy, in all its messy glory. I heard dissonance and harmony, words playing with words, all the beautiful sounds of the kind of real poetry that one can “live into” as John Ciardi once put it. I knew Leo’s poetic voice must be shared.

This inaugural volume of what has now been fondly deemed The Poetry Project, in light of its ongoing nature (Leo is ever composing), will beckon the willing reader into a world of wonderment, hauntingly familiar and yet refreshingly new.

—Lisa Andreason, editor