More Praise for Voice Lessons
When Will My Life Not Suck?
Ramon Presson shows remarkable clarity with humility and candor. A book that helps readers onto a path designed to bring joy into their lives. ---Stellasue Lee, PhD, two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, author of the nominated collections Crossing the Double Yellow Line, and Firecracker Red.
Let’s all be honest. We’ve all asked this question—when will my life not suck? Ramon Presson just pushes the question out into the open, precisely where it needs to be. If you want to laugh and ponder and move closer to life, you will find a friend in these pages.
Winn Collier
author of A Burning in My Bone: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson, Restless Faith, and Holy Curiosity
When Will My Life Not Suck? is a rare combination of authenticity, wit, and Scripture-based wisdom. Dismissing the flimsy promises of the self-help industry, this book takes seriously the ugly fact that our lives simply don’t look in every season like a fairytale ending—but that we also don’t need to stay stuck in a place of disillusionment and discontent. WWMLNS manages to be thoroughly funny and deeply serious—not to mention eminently practical in its step-by-step approach toward a life of meaning and purpose.
--- Joy Jordan-Lake, PhD, author of A Tangled Mercy and Jesus Makes Me Nervous
Ramon Presson is not just another silly optimist; he has an outlook on life you might just want for yourself. When Will My Life Not Suck? is treasure-stocked with wisdom and solid advice that actually makes sense. Just don’t expect a formula. Instead, expect help in exploring your journey, your own personal wilderness, until you discover the healing grace Jesus offers to people like us who have tried to turn stones into bread. --- Wes Yoder, author of Band of Brothers
Voice Lessons book cover as accompanying graphic
Presson’s language is common speech that reaches out to the reader. He manages to be levelheaded in building a poem, also wonderfully and purposefully capable at making his points. Yet, with magical intentions, his unique usage of poetry, his artistic ideal of what poetry should be manages to be his very own
.--- Stellasue Lee, PhD, two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, author of the nominated collections Crossing the Double Yellow Line, and Firecracker Red.
If I could, I’d take voice lessons from Ramon Presson every day. In his prize-winning collection his wordful world and mind are alive with the landscapes of Tennessee and beyond, the vagaries of romance and wry observation, always leaving room in life’s cup for cream—and room to breathe, to heal, and make mistakes.
--- Linda Parsons, author of Mother Land and This Shaky Earth
Ramon Presson layers the chords of these fine poems like a master conductor, weaving religion and humor, grief and love, until the reader can’t help but hum along. Throughout the collection, the poet presents challenging questions about what it means to be fully alive, but diffuses the tension with a subtle wit. There is no doubt that Ramon Presson has found his voice. By reading and savoring these poems, the rest of us may find a little more of the music inside us as well.
--- Sandy Coomer, author of The Presence of Absence and Rivers Within Us, and the founding editor of the Rockvale Review poetry journal.