Want for Nothing

Author: Jon Woodward

Publisher: Slope Editions (2026)

Want for Nothing is a linked series of short poems of kaleidoscopic variety, by turns cryptic and blunt, funny and sad, awake again and dreaming again. Collectively, these poems speak of disorientation and longing, but the grudging circumstances of this speech and the irrepressible playfulness powering it are both evident from moment to moment, a dynamic perhaps referred to in the text as "that characteristic charismatic poignant self-involved springtime loveydovey geargrinding flowercore." Formally, the poems are fixed by a pulsing count of words per line, by the steady inhalation of caesurae, and by a punctuation-free flow that washes watercoloristic effect through even passages of simple narration. These formalisms will be familiar to readers of Woodward's previous title Rain, but also will be instantly accessible to readers encountering his work for the first time. What is longing? And what does it mean to remember? Of what consequence is poetic compulsion in hell, or in heaven, for that matter?