Voice Lessons

The voice of poet John Tynan has a natural beauty all its own that is both an innate gift and a moral, as well as technical, achievement: fresh, unspoiled, casual and yet artful, never dry or contrived, always freely flowing, and of a sensibility so kind, humorous, and radically open to experience in its immediacy and depth, that it seems an inseparable, innate part of the poet's character; and yet, again and again, in his reflections, in his lyricism, the burden of experience and memory is acknowledged and overcome by a rededication of self to love and life. If there is a lesson in these Lessons for his readers, it may be that spontaneity and immediate joy constitute not merely a state of being, but a creative act of becoming.