Saturday, May 27, 2023: Review of Richard Modiano's "The Forbidden Lunchbox"
If there is no part of you unfulfilled by stock options and prime time programming and cutting edge digital technology – then perhaps these poems are not for you (From “Notes to Self”, Richard Modiano) It’s not often you find a warning label in a poetry book; it’s refreshing, and sometimes necessary. To be honest, poetry is not for everyone, especially poetry that champions the causes of those who are not socially/economically/racially privileged, that’s also political, passionate, and deeply personal. Richard Modiano’s The Forbidden Lunchbox (© 2022 Punk Hostage Press), is all of these things. Full disclosure: I’ve known Modiano, though not as well as I’d like to, for almost two decades. I know him as an expert haiku/senryu poet, a guy who was instrumental in steering Beyond Baroque back from the brink of financial ruin, and as a certified member of the Industrial Workers of the World . I know him as an honest, forthright, decent man, who, once committed to a cause, integ...