Literary Works

No one talks the talk or walks the walk like Fred Byrnes. The poems in this powerful collection are not sweet lullabies sung to suckling babies. Instead, they are swift, sharp jabs to the jaw, pounding left hooks to the body, and knockout right crosses to the temple that take your breath away and leave you gasping for more.

If, as they say, to know of life one must first understand the beating of the human heart, then Fred Byrnes is the best damn cardiologist I've ever known...and a hell of a poet.

Byrnes' subject is frequently the suburbia we deny exists. His direct language and rhythms affirm the humble dignity of the disenfranchised and skewer the hypocritical. These poems will make you laugh at our idiosyncrasies and mourn our stupidity.

Reading a Fred Byrnes poem is like taking a walk in a neighborhood where people are known inside and out, where streets go back and forward in time. The beat - mimetic as heartbreak - meters lines as raw as sad reality.

Fred Byrnes is an American original. A gifted poet and fiction writer, Fred's not afraid to "put it to paper" and thus, he is one true voice for us all.