Len Solo

"I love this book of Len Solo's poetry...It brings me back to my favorite poet Rilke in some poignant ways." Jonathan Kozol on > ROOTED IN PLACE < (2006).

Other poetry books by Len Solo:

> LANDSCAPE OF THE MISTY EYE (2004), with Steve Weitzman.

> THE MAGIC OF LIGHT (2008)

> A SYMPHONY OF THE ORDINARY: Episodes in a Life (2013)

I do not try to preach in my poems, sometimes I try to teach. I do try to entertain, to surprise and to delight, and (do not laugh) to find truths, the ugly and the beautiful. Sadness, happiness, joy, wonder, the mundane, the sensual, anger, the sublime, the real, the fanciful--they're all here, plus more, in my writings.

I also try to show, not tell, try to capture and hold important moments and their emotions using simple, direct words and images that make the poems accessible.

NOTE: ALL OF MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE--at a significant discount--FROM ME AT lensolo2@verizon.net.

> MAKING AN EXTRAORDINARY SCHOOL: THE WORK OF ORDINARY PEOPLE. How one K-8 school in Cambridge, MA, takes a different road that leads to tremendous success for its very diverse students. Disney Spotlight School of the Year 2000. I was its principal for 27 years.

> EDUCATION: BACK TO THE FUTURE is a collection of inter-connected essays about what happened to education in the experimental years of the 1960's and 1970's and how we need to now recapture that spirit of experimentation to correct all of the errors of No Child Left Behind/Race To The Top and the like. I was there then, one of those innovators, and I'm still here now in 2016 and understand more deeply how schooling has become perverted in the U.S.

> THE TURNING OF THE DARK is a series of inter-connected short stories, with Billy Kendi as the main character, a person we see first as a youth growing up poor in southwestern Pennsylvania and then watch him grow to maturity and old age in subsequent stories, as he loves, marries, has children, works, has affairs, divorces, has professional success and personal failures, moving from place to place, ending up in New England. Billy is a startling character who will stay with the readers, helping them delve into the mystery of their own lives. For me, this book is a dream come true, a dream that started over 50 years ago when I wrote my first good short story.

> SAVING DEMOCRACY (2013) a pamphlet that has short "political" articles about capitalism out of control, socialism for the wealthy, the Great Recession, the decline of the middle class, [un]fair trade, the Fed, binding arbitration, free speech, taxes, just schools, credit cards and bringing democracy to America. Available as a Kindle Book.

> A SYMPHONY OF THE ORDINARY: Episodes in a Life.(2013). The poems show episodes in the life of a person, from boyhood, to being a teen, a young adult, middle age/maturity and then on into old age. Again, the poems are short, vivid, often emotional, slices of life captured in plain language. I think this is my best poetry book to date.

>THE LOOTING OF AMERICA (2016) expands SAVING DEMOCRACY from a pamphlet to a full book. How was the middle class created? What has led to its current decline? What were the causes of the Great Recession? How is the widening economic gap connected to the loss of democracy in America? What's education have to do with this? + much much more. This book will knock your socks off or, at the least, curl your toes. A revised, 2nd edition of LOOTING is available as of February 2017.