Footnotes to the Sun

In this his second book of poetry, retired Honolulu and former Washington D.C. newsman John E. Simonds explores further experiences, travels, family milestones and personal encounters. Footnotes to the Sun pursues his interests in running and reflection, while also revisiting some compass points of life. A Depression era child of New England parents, he provides glimpses of youth in New York’s lower Hudson valley, early newspaper days in Indiana and Ohio, historic brushes in Washington, D.C., and mid-life to later years in Hawai’i. Four decades in ever-changing Honolulu have provided more than enough to examine, but Simonds also shares personal insights on pills and prayer in Manhattan, life changes over time, stress and serenity in the Pacific, family deaths in Connecticut and California, links to the past refocused by travel. Footnotes offers a range of verse forms—short pieces, detailed narratives, prose poems—sprinkled with dry humor from the East Oahu flood zone where Simonds has lived with his family since the 1970s, a few hundred yards from the Pacific, a natural neighbor that bears watching.