Constant Is the Rain

“Want is need. Want is greed. Want is poor. Want wants more.” More hard times in tough places, “Constant is the Rain” is a new collection of recession era poems and stories. Nationally acclaimed author Rex Sexton is the recipient of The Eric Hoffer Editor's Choice Award for Prose, Best New Writing 2007 for “Holy Night.”Editorial ReviewsReview“Relentless pessimism about the state of the nation infuses Sexton's … accomplished poetry and short fiction … The title piece, about hard life and untimely death in the ghetto, introduces the book's dark atmosphere: ‘Being and begetting, struggling and/ enduring … as gunfire crackles and sirens wail/ and her fate is sealed with coffin nails.' Sexton's characters – Nowhere Men as much as Everymen – are war veterans, hobos, sex workers, and blue-collar employees facing job losses … His settings are urban wastelands. In ‘The Penworn Papers' an impoverished artist recalls his degenerate life … in ‘The Gift,' a Jewish satire redolent of Shalom Auslander, a young man reverts to emptiness in his old age … The palette is Edward Hopper's, the ironic tone O. Henry's. ‘Our Town' playfully affirms Thornton Wilder's morbid vision through gloomy imagery. The poems (are) rich with alliteration, internal rhymes, assonance and puns … They have broader application, universalizing human depravity …Sexton's talent for social commentary and character sketching marks him as – in a title he gives a character in ‘Chop Suey' – the Modigliani of the Mean Streets” Kirkus Reviews“Earnest and emotional, Constant is the Rain embraces desperation in tone, subject, and even in diction. A yearning for meaning in a nonsensical world comes to shape much of the text, forming the image of a people and a country existing without any defined meaning.“Sexton's poetry generally forms isolated scenes of hardship and makes up the bulk of the work. ‘Like crucifixion crosses dangling weary ghosts,/ the telephone poles along the lost roads of America/ flash past me.' These images, producing small segments of reality, combine to show the complete picture of a fragmented people looking for solace in a world of hard truths. From the individual seeking understanding to the drug addict seeking a reprieve from existence, the characters are … easily recognizable and empathetic figures.“Complimenting Sexton's poetry is not only prose but his artwork … most impressive about the prose … is the continued attention to detail in diction and syntax … the result is a work accessible to all … that imparts a feeling that is for the people rather than simply about them.” Alex Franks Foreward Reviews