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Plainspoken, wry, and tender, these contemporary American poems explore memory, family, grief, faith, politics, animals, and the small flashes of mercy that keep an unkind world alive.
The Pope's Astronomer is a wide-ranging collection of contemporary American poems by GF Korreck, attentive to the ordinary moments in which memory, grief, humor, faith, anger, love, and animal presence suddenly become luminous.
Moving from childhood ballfields, family kitchens, and Michigan streets to public tragedies, biblical figures, political spectacle, endangered animals, art, music, and the afterlife, these poems speak in a voice at once plainspoken, wry, and tender.
The collection turns again and again toward questions of how we remember, how we survive, what we owe to the vulnerable, and how beauty keeps appearing even in an unkind world.
For readers of accessible literary poetry, The Pope's Astronomer offers elegies, comic visions, meditations, character sketches, and small revelations. It is a book for anyone who has found a whole life in a passing image, a lost voice, a family story, an old dog, a dark joke, or the sudden generosity of light.
These poems are intimate without being closed off, funny without being glib, and clear-eyed without surrendering their belief in mercy, imagination, and the magic of words.
PRAISE FOR THE POPE'S ASTRONOMER
“In this collection of courageous surprises, GF Korreck has given us an original vision, one in which to live—anew and abundantly.”
—Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron, named the year’s Best Poetry Collection by Foreword Review
“G.F. Korreck’s skillful observations show us a world that is imperfect but deserving of care.”
—Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of the award-winning collection Secular Audacity, Mayapple Press, 2025
“With equal measure of faith and humor, the speakers in these poems meditate on mortality, longing, and ‘a single sentence / that will change the world.’”
—Katie Kalisz, author of Flu Season, Cornerstone Press, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GF Korreck is the author of Lowell Diary and the editor of Sins & Felonies and Busy Griefs, Raw Towns, a poetic response to the brutality of war in Ukraine. He attended Grand Rapids Junior College, Grand Valley State College, and Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Journalism. He believes in the magic of poetry.
Paperback: 94 pages, 6 x 9 inches
Publisher: Grand River Poetry Press
ISBN-13: 9781968226084
Plainspoken, wry, and tender, these contemporary American poems explore memory, family, grief, faith, politics, animals, and the small flashes of mercy that keep an unkind world alive.
The Pope's Astronomer is a wide-ranging collection of contemporary American poems by GF Korreck, attentive to the ordinary moments in which memory, grief, humor, faith, anger, love, and animal presence suddenly become luminous.
Moving from childhood ballfields, family kitchens, and Michigan streets to public tragedies, biblical figures, political spectacle, endangered animals, art, music, and the afterlife, these poems speak in a voice at once plainspoken, wry, and tender.
The collection turns again and again toward questions of how we remember, how we survive, what we owe to the vulnerable, and how beauty keeps appearing even in an unkind world.
For readers of accessible literary poetry, The Pope's Astronomer offers elegies, comic visions, meditations, character sketches, and small revelations. It is a book for anyone who has found a whole life in a passing image, a lost voice, a family story, an old dog, a dark joke, or the sudden generosity of light.
These poems are intimate without being closed off, funny without being glib, and clear-eyed without surrendering their belief in mercy, imagination, and the magic of words.
PRAISE FOR THE POPE'S ASTRONOMER
“In this collection of courageous surprises, GF Korreck has given us an original vision, one in which to live—anew and abundantly.”
—Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron, named the year’s Best Poetry Collection by Foreword Review
“G.F. Korreck’s skillful observations show us a world that is imperfect but deserving of care.”
—Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of the award-winning collection Secular Audacity, Mayapple Press, 2025
“With equal measure of faith and humor, the speakers in these poems meditate on mortality, longing, and ‘a single sentence / that will change the world.’”
—Katie Kalisz, author of Flu Season, Cornerstone Press, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GF Korreck is the author of Lowell Diary and the editor of Sins & Felonies and Busy Griefs, Raw Towns, a poetic response to the brutality of war in Ukraine. He attended Grand Rapids Junior College, Grand Valley State College, and Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Journalism. He believes in the magic of poetry.
Paperback: 94 pages, 6 x 9 inches
Publisher: Grand River Poetry Press
ISBN-13: 9781968226084