jim bourey uses his poetry with the precision of a mathematician—to measure the distance between storms, between himself and his past and his abbreviated future, between himself and the people he loves, himself and his God. A sideways//glimpse in the mirror presented/truth illuminated……the poems in bourey’s first full collection, The Distance Between Us, are written in service to clear-eyed truth. This book is a must read.

~ Linda Blaskey, author of White Horses

The Distance Between Us is clear-eyed and nimble poetry. jim bourey is a master of the poetic moment, of carving a memory to make new figures which seem at once both brand new and utterly familiar. It is full of necessary lines, reveries, and frank honesty. A lush poetry of real human attention, bourey’s work has a way of moving us again and again with its gravitas and deep concentration. The poems of The Distance Between Us know how to startle and shine.

~ Christopher Salerno, author of Sun & Urn

jim bourey writes poems as Edward Hopper would paint them—an American landscape where from the dark night you see a woman at her window repairing a lampshade, holding pliers and a glass of wine. Images are precisely selected, strangely evocative. We have the scent of nuns. A chickadee with only one wing. We see how ‘weathered people’ explore the possibilities of love. These are poems to catch the eye and reward the mind.

~ Joe Cottonwood, author of Random Saints