“Sam Pereira’s poems are built to last. The expertly turned sentences and lines show exquisite craftsmanship. But Pereira’s poems reach way beyond craftsmanship. With a tonal range that includes hilarity and wonder, righteous indignation and whispered affection, Pereira accounts for experience—the poet’s own and all of ours—with the fidelity and big-heartedness of a first rate artist. Like the horse who appears in one poem, this book waits generously for you, and then it “takes you on the ride of your life.””
—Peter Campion
“Sam Pereira, a self-described “great disappointment / Of the universe,” infuses his poems with sadness and humor and something more...something ineffable. In poems that are “Sexy, mysterious, in pain,” Pereira allows desire to diminish until it falls, at last, within our grasp: “I / Crave the small things / In America, which grows / Predictably quieter, trying / To find its soul.” His deeply felt lyrics channel the voices of wise deadbeats and casual sophisticates. Like a night of sipping single malt Scotch and listening to Chet Baker while recalling ex-lovers, these poems provide those exquisite sensual pleasures that “Make [our] lives remarkable again.””
—Michael Waters
“Dusting on Sunday is a must-read. Sam Pereira’s poetry creates an entire universe in which the possible and impossible seamlessly coexist. In a familiar world in which the wind picks up small leaves & garden insects, depositing them in the neighbor’s yard—in which fathers die, and love is found and lost—the unfamiliar happens as well. God is a great rabbit, the screams of lobsters will never be heard, horses never learn to read, Tupac is rapping to the angels, and Sinatra would be singing the author’s songs were it not for the fact that he’s dead and shooting craps at the Sands Heaven. Dusting on Sunday is filled with intelligent wit that allows its deeper themes to be heartfelt by the reader. Don’t miss out. Read this book!”
—Marcia Southwick
“Sam Pereira’s previous books of poetry include: The Marriage of the Portuguese (L’Epervier Press, 1978), Brittle Water (Abattoir Editions/Penumbra Press, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 1987), A Café in Boca (Tebot Bach, 2007), and the expanded edition of his first book, which was published by Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth in 2012. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Piecework: 19 Fresno Poets (Silver Skates Publishing, 1987), The Body Electric: Poems from the American Poetry Review (W. W. Norton, 2000), How Much Earth (Roundhouse Press, 2001), and Blue Arc West (Tebot Bach, 2007). He lives and teaches in the San Joaquin Valley of California and is married to writer Susan Graham.
