In The Year I Learned the Backstroke, James Hannon takes us from Vermont to Munich, from Sarajevo to the Poconos, from prisons to cathedrals to the National Mall as his poems explore
Questions of family, history, and social justice. His probing eye, keen and never still for too long, is not afraid to look into the darkness of human nature—where “there is no axis mundi/no tether, no rules” – to seek out what light may be left to find.
—Nick McRae, author of Mountain Redemption and The Name Museum

James Hannon’s first collection invites us to enter into his compassion for self and others. With language succinct yet casual, he mines experiences as parent and child, teacher and student, tourist, lover, betrayer, friend. These poems thrive on irony (‘my suffering/their iniquity/divine justice”) as well as juxtaposition (“the love of ice cream/the iconic baseball team”). Some draw on a psalm-like repetition, others on the rhymes of childhood, but most fall into the easy rhythm of short lines of free verse. Often a sense of metaphor carries the poems in unexpected directions.

The Year I Learned the Backstroke offers a harvest of vivid reflections layered with self-examination, a labor of love toward both present and past.
—Jesse Brown, author of Lucky and What We Don’t Know We Know

These are poems of a man questioning and questing in a complex world. Plain spoken and direct, they are also, at times, full of sudden joy and insight: “I’ve seen the leaves fall,/ the elm tree toppled./ I ask only to live today,/ as full of juice as your peaches,/ to shout and sing/ thank you! thank you!/ fearless and joyful.”
—Nadia Colburn, author of The High Shelf

In the title poem of his superb new collection, To My Children at Christmas, James Hannon writes, “I am giving you my heart,” and what a gift this is! In these pages we discover the heart of a spiritual seeker, a storyteller and healer, an astute observer of human nature in all its beauty and brokenness. With lyric intensity and narrative skill, Hannon guides us through “full catastrophe living” and “terror incognita” toward a place of hard-won wisdom. Along the way he asks what it means to be human, each moment, in the face of violence and suffering — from the personal sphere to the planetary, and invites us to consider: “How will you help?”

This book shimmers with practical, playful counsel for living: “The sharks are here to stay. / We’re learning to live with them.” “Breathe./Breathe again./Open your hands./Laugh at yourself./Begin.” “With love there is no shame or fear.” As a psychotherapist who has known the shadow, and as a Quaker contemplative living into the Light, James Hannon the poet reassures his reader that “the dark will not last forever.”

This hope is grounded in poetry and ancient wisdom, in love and family, and in the healing powers of the natural world: “in time our land will be restored, and I will leave to my children a garden.” For the generous gift that is these poems, and his encouragement to see our world anew, I join with the poet who “asks only to live today… to sing/thank you! thank you!”
—Alex Kern, editor of the anthology Becoming Fire, and co-editor of the interfaith/intercultural publication Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts