Blurbs:
The last time angels appeared to the disciples
they told them to stop looking at the sky.
Damn good advice if you ask me, for one
realm is impossible enough to understand.
Maybe so, but watching Alan Berecka attempt to make sense of life on planet Earth is one of the brightest pleasures I can imagine. I can think of few more reliable, congenial tour guides, as he takes us through the haunted landscapes of an America that is quickly disappearing. Although the tone of Why Matter Might Matter is elegiac, a paean to lost drive-in movie theaters, vinyl records, film cameras and vanished youth, the plain fact is that Berecka is also one of our funniest poets, with an uncanny knack for letting the hot air out of our pretensions. And if you want to understand the existential connection between popcorn, Julie Andrews, and bare breasts please open your books to “Popcorn.”
George Bilgere
In these humor-laced poems, Berecka peers at the divine with the skeptical eye of an “agnostic Episcopalian,” finding more grace in food pantries and stained-glass punchlines than in church dogma. His willingness to befriend the profundity of Mystery echoes theologians like Thomas Merton or the wry wink of poets like Billy Collins. With sharp wit and deep empathy, Berecka reminds us that while our presence here is relatively insignificant and certainly temporary, our capacity for unbounded love and a good joke is no small matter.
Laurence Musgrove, The Dogs of Alishan and Other Poems from Taiwan
Alan Berecka’s latest book is a richly detailed collection of poetic observations about the interwoven past and present and the search for what really matters in our lives—the longing to belong to something beyond ourselves, to be spiritually connected not to the dogma of religion but to a realm of knowledge and acceptance, and to the miracle of shared years with a loved one. He acts as a kind of curator of finely observed narratives that show the power of memory, the ironies of forced belief that prioritize guilt over love, the everyday glimpses of mystery, the absurdities of life that provoke big questions. What really matters in the end, Berecka shows, is what we think matters, not what is imposed on us or is expected of us. That is the true path to find a place in the universe and to touch what is divine.
—Kathryn Jones, The Solace of Wild Places, 2026 Will Rogers Medallion Award