Trees, Coffee, and the Eyes of Deer

Reviews

Grapes has been called an Everyman of poetry because his work cuts to the bone of basic truth without the pretense that characterizes much of what passes for contemporary poetry. He is, in turn, gentle and merciless, funny and brutal, a 20th-century Diogenes searching for the honest man within himself.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

These poems transcend what might have been self-indulgence to show a full range of universal emotions. We find a man in touch with the mythology of his life. This is the strength of his poetry—he writes with an honesty that would put all the psychiatrists on Bedford Avenue out of business. Grapes is an Everyman creating glorious images out of a sometimes less-than-glorious reality, tugging at emotions and overthrowing state sensibilities.

Laurel Bogen, Los Angeles Herald Examiner