Quinton Duval’s quietly persuasive voice is calm, thoughtful, serene, and, in these lovely poems, as sweet as an angel’s whisper. Listen up!
—Ed McClanahan

The ‘average Joe’ of these poems oversees a life as ordinary as rain—and as essential—where events unroll like a carpet. With a sensibility fine-tuned to the nuances of the natural world on the California coast, Quinton Duval proves himself equally responsive to the heart’s weather. His understated style draws on everyday happenings: birdsong, sharing a bottle of wine, a woman in the next car weeping on the steering wheel; a man on his knees searching for his glasses. But make no mistake: the simple diction carries a depth-charge. Here, the reader will find some of the best love poems yet, lines that reverberate in memory, unleashing a tidal wave of feeling.
—Madeline DeFrees

Quinton Duval’s poems quick-step to the difficult music of love. The poems are buoyant and smart, full of feeling, suddenly deep—I think they are marvelous in every way.
—Dennis Schmitz

As the closing lines of ‘Poem For Nancy Lee...’ proclaim, Quinton Duval can make a song / out of anything you say. And when he does turn commonplace, base metal conversational moments into poems, into love songs, believe me, they do not merely embrace platonically the symphonics and sensibilities of life; they engage and take the reader, the listener, into resplendent dimensions of sensuous, and sensual, revelation. Joe’s Rain is music, alright. And Quinton Duval is quintessentially both literary alchemist and virtuoso poet. Akin to, say, a Patsy Cline or Hank Williams greatest hits album, this book deserves to go Gold.
—Paul Zarzyski

reviews & links

Review of JOE’S RAIN by The Great American Pinup

Review of JOE’S RAIN by Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century

Review of Quinton Duval’s first book, DINNER MUSIC, by Lost Roads Publishers

 

For other works by Fred Dalkey, painter of Bannon Slough, see Paul Thiebaud Gallery and Crown Point Press