Walking Between the Raindrops

In the poem "Contributor's Note," Thomas DeFreitas introduces himself quite accurately as the often humorous and polymorphously talented poet that he is. These poems are personal to the point of universality. They reference the greats of literature along with the latest alt bands. He drinks "lyric moonshine" from the works of Dylan Thomas and brings us to understand the sensitivities of being the odd kid out. In this collection DeFreitas can rhyme playfully about the problems of modernity, or wax elegiac about the changing seasons. It's an ever-shifting canvas of darks and lights, tinged with a self-conscious intelligence we can relate to while avoiding raindrops, or whenever.

-Linda Haviland Conte, author of Seldom Purely

In a "land famished for grace," Walking Between the Raindrops is a feast of necessary nourishment. Thomas DeFreitas' poetry drips with wit, wisdom, and the kind of tenderness and sensory detail that leaves you feeling like you too have sat with the "gnarled and skimp-leaved trees" of Cooke's Hollow. Like a downpour that washes everything clean, or like a cup of good, black coffee, DeFreitas' poems are fresh, real, alive, and are certain to wake you up.

-Julia Fehrenbacher, author of Staying in Love

Thomas is a sacra-sensual poet, speaking with tender reverence to the ritual props and set dressing of everyday life. He is a poet's poet in capturing self-illumination, ever-noticing the Cupid's arrow/Annunciation moments of Muse piercing and gracing the writer. He falls in wholesome love via holy triptych-panels (stanzas) of watching the world. This collection evokes Spencer Reece, Baudelaire as a Boston flâneur, Tony Hoagland, Mary Oliver (if she were a city mouse), and has Ginsberg's expansiveness. "My sight would shelter in the candle-dotted dark / of an ancient monastery's chapel." All who populate these poems are candle-dots in a beloved, beckoning sacred worldscape. It is an honor to read these poems and feel you are welcome, sitting beside a "poetfriend" on a cushioned pan-spiritual pew.

-jojo Lazar, Poet-Artist