Beautiful Aches, by Ken Letko

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. The poems in Beautiful Aches were created from 2021 through 2024, so some were written during the COVID pandemic and in small ways affirm the solace and comfort poetry affords in the face of dark, troubled times. “Why I Enjoy Sleep,” for example, attests to the way sleep can meld dream and memory into a unique personal pleasure. “The Sleeping Boat” uses sleep as a metaphor to honor centuries’ old insights developed by people who used close observation and interaction with the natural world as a means of survival, highlighting how “yesterday waits for tomorrow.” While several poems in Beautiful Aches center on sleep, others accentuate the beauty, power, and inspiration that can be found in plants, animals, and landscapes. The poem “Mentors” recognizes the way “gophers penetrate / darkness and leave / a passage to light.” Overall, this chapbook offers a Twenty-First Century Pilgrim a small journey, mostly within the natural world, where “hopelessness and hope / have the same beginning.” Ken Letko’s poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Abandoned Mine, Cæsura, California Quarterly, Cottonwood, Earth’s Daughters, Lake Effect, Rattle, Ravens Perch, Spillway, and Valley Voices. Both the North American Review and Poetry South have nominated his poems for Pushcart awards. He lives in the redwoods of California’s northernmost coastal county, Del Norte, where he enjoys juggling and gathering firewood. Flowstone Press published his book Bright Darkness in 2017 and his sixth chapbook Chopping Wood in the Moonlight in 2021. Beautiful Aches is his seventh chapbook.