On The Call Sign is Jonah:
The Call Sign is Jonah reads as the diary of a person counting days by cups of coffee and bowls of a pipe. A person who sees everything a little different; a lot more. Maybe it’s the water.
While reading this book of Mick Parsons’ poetry, I found myself reflecting on my own time spent on ships. How I started to see things differently with each new day. The things I noticed about the people and the boats and the water. How things change and how they seem to be on a never-ending cycle. While I only spent a fairly short time on ships, whether working or as a passenger, I couldn’t imagine the impact of one who spent so much time governed by their schedules. I’ve tried to see that side. But, now, I have a glimpse of what it must be like. And I appreciate that.
There is beauty in this book, and excitement. There is also exhaustion, and disillusionment. I appreciate all of those, too. As a fellow “noticer” of action and what’s behind it, it’s enlightening to get Mick’s perspective of what it’s like to wait for the water, live by the water, ponder on the water, to schedule a birthday according to the water, and eat oranges as protection from the water’s past.
To be a person who sees and knows the things many people only buy for amusement is something inexplainable. The Call Sign is Jonah is a chronicle of what that’s like. – Wendy Cartwright (https://cartwrightlitba.wordpress.com/)
Forgive me if this sounds cliche, but I feel the ebb and flow of a most interesting life in Parsons’ poems; along with the pull of strong undercurrents. Parsons’ words roll and tumble like sea glass, beaten on rocks and barnacles, polished sand-smooth yet retaining a sense of grittiness. – Chad M. Horn (from back cover)
Here, Jonah’s nightsea journey unfolds through everyday cycles and rhythms. With tender and plainspoken language, it moves through river currents, labor, domesticity, and all things in between. The poems serve up and transcend the details of daily life. We are grounded in the mysteries of rising one more day in our series of days going forward. These poems offer a quiet, steady portrait of a working and thinking man’s resilience. Afloat, adrift, then on shore and at rest again, this collection shows the reader an underlying and mythic stature of the everyday. – Marie Monroe, Poet and Creative Arts Therapist, author of the forthcoming collection, Pluperfect (from back cover)
On Growl & Mud: Collected Poems 2021-202
I like to imagine Mick Parsons as the poet wearing a backpack and well-worn boots, looking up at the moon before finding a solitary park bench on which to write. From the moment I met him, he's been an honest and unpretentious poet, unafraid of what that means in today's literary landscape. Much of Parson's latest collection, Growl & Mud, Collected Poems 2021-2023 (Basement Books, 2023) is poetry that has been previously published under his pen-moniker, dirtysacred. Parsons says in the book's introduction, "I like dirtysacred as a name as much the name my parents gave me... A name, an identity, has become almost as important to poetry... as the work itself. And I simply don't care about any of that...I just want the work to stand or fall, regardless of who I am." Parson's work, whether it's the individual poems or the collective whole, reflects precisely what he sees. It is clear that the author would like nothing more than to vanish into the background as the reader enters, and let the work speak for itself.
Beginning in 2023, Growl and Mud walks backward into 2021, with a world recovering from a pandemic, and its people in disarray. Parsons uses free verse as often as he uses form in the structures found in Growl and Mud, expansive and diverse as his subjects. Even his own body is not safe from his high-powered lens: "...body / as a broken tea cup / maybe / no one will notice the crack / track progression by how / the scar looks." The movement in the lines are careful, matching the speaker's body, healing from surgery. Whether interior or exterior, Parson's lens is clear and unflinching. Often composing outside, often in his beloved Ohio River Valley, he witnesses nature and human nature erupting in full view. "A Monday night on the wharf" is an example of this, as vivid as film, its subject, a street woman battling mental illness: "afraid of the dark and sometimes / brandishing a knife she begs the night / lights for cigarettes..." The picture of her, taken without prejudice, includes the ghost of our collective failure to care for one another--the last character standing.
Parsons includes a series of days near the beginning of the book, each one corresponding to a day in the life of 2023. "Day 3" comes right out of the gate, swinging: "These poems are not proclamations. / They are questions." The speaker returns at the end: "These poems explain nothing. / They admit everything." Throughout the book, Parsons' poetry is an admission of life. His weapons of beauty are thrift, simplicity, and compassion, making sure the reader is coming along for the ride. - Janet Rodriguez, author of Making an American Family: A Recipe in Five Generations and Interview Editor of The Rumpus