"Black Summer by Wayne F. Burke is more than a book of poetry. It is an experience to be lived and relived. Burke taps into our most shared experiences of humanity. His conversational verse entices the reader to continue following the exploits of this wandering everyman who searches, yearns for definition, only to find definitions lacking. But the road is all-encompassing. This book is for lovers of a good story, a good life, and is a roadmap for all of us who often find ourselves on the shoulder of life's

highway."

- James Benger, author of From the Back

"Poems as funny and as tragic as could ever be imagined-

from a lifetime of REAL experience in the REAL world."

-Howard Frank Mosher, author, A Stranger In The

Kingdom.

"Wayne F. Burke is 65 (going on 66) years old. He reminds me a little of Ed Galing, who wrote poems into his 90's. When I used to see Galing in a publication I always read his poems first not because he was old but because I knew he wouldn't bullshit me. I knew there would be no slickness or pretentiousness, no metaphors stretched out so far you forgot where they started, no look-at-me-being-a-poet, pat me on the head, junk. Just a sensitive, sometimes fucked-up, lonely person writing about the moments of his life."

-Mather Schneider

"Burke jolts his reader into a state of awareness-one of the

high aims of all art."

-Arthur Hoyle, author, The Unknown Henry Miller.