"It’s rare that our attention is captured in just a few lines, but drop yourself anywhere into the first chapter of The Hollow Middle, and you’ll find yourself caught up. Popielaski’s style is an organized four-car pileup, with just a bit of an echo of Joyce, a bit of an echo of Eliot. "
-- The Seattle Review of Books
Isn't It Romantic?
(Texas Review Press)
"Isn’t It Romantic? fulfills with irony the lulls of wonder the poet witnesses in his daily existence. Much of the pleasure and wit found in the readings of these finely honed poems is the juxtaposition of the classical and literary references of an erudite mind making reckonings of even the smallest episodes of his life; like when he makes mythical his own aging dog by connecting him to faithful Argus of the Iliad, or referencing the ancient Sumerian’s discovery of beer in a poem experiencing a modern Dive Bar. Popielaski's poems consistently entertain and inform, allowing us inside his unique insights."—Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate
A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace (Antrim House Books)
"The poems in John Popielaski's A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace are by turns solemn, comic, earnest, ironic, wistful, and hopeful. In poems whose subjects range from a Buddhist burial ritual to Polish jokes to the beheading of a Frenchman, Popielaski explores the small (and not-so-small) kindnesses and brutalities of humanity. Always on the lookout for the larger meaning, and seldom finding one, he revels finally in what he feels the world has offered."--Rennie McQuilkin
Contemporary Martyrdom
(Birch Brook Press)
“These poems are crafted, considered, and strong, and I look forward to reading them again and again.” —Henry Taylor
“The poetry is powerful, well-crafted, and organically alive, evolving from a fine sense of detail and weighing of significances…This is a book to take deeply and passionately while under the influence of our society. And it is a book to take back with oneself when turning away from society. Go crazy with it.” —Jared Smith, Small Press Review