Wee Hour Martyrdom

Poetry. Charles Simic has said of the short poem, "Less is always more.... It's about all and everything, the metaphysics of a few words surrounded by much silence." In this collection, Tandon takes up this dictum, juxtaposing the absurd of the everyday with a compassionate, redemptive ideal. His poetry is both accessible and democratic, in the sense that no subject is unworthy of concern--he believes in the grace and nobility of even the simplest object or human behavior. His personas are beset by fear, insecurity, defeat and loss, yet they possess the humor and imagination necessary to endure.

Jason Tandon was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1975. He is the author of Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press (due out in 2009). He is also the author of two chapbooks, Rumble Strip (also from sunnyoutside) and Flight, both of which were nominated for the 2008 Massachusetts Book Award. His poems were twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007 and have appeared in many journals, including New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry International, Poet Lore, and Fugue. Tandon holds a BA and MA in English from Middlebury College and an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Hadley, Massachusetts with his wife and their dog Fergus.