“If Holly Prado didn’t exist, the Muses would have to invent her to fulfill the imperatives of the imagination. Monkey Journal, her chronicle of small and large events over the course of a year, reveals a very important and often neglected truth. In order to live a creative and ethical life, one must do it rather deliberately. Prado has worked tirelessly, as she says, “to tell what can’t be told.” Focus is the fact and font of all creativity and it has always been Prado’ts gift as a writer—absolute focus and attention to where she is and who she’s with. She is also patient enough to wait for the absolute defining moment. Like the moon, her guardian spirit, Prado never forces anything. Her work is, simply, all the forms of light.”
—Eloise Klein-Healy
“In this exquisite and lyrical journal, acclaimed poet Holly Prado, long responsible for some of our most searching, deeply felt, and beautifully articulated explorations of the soul, plumbs the mysteries of the ordinary, seeking to “tell what can’t be told,” looking for the “the ineffable, the truth under the truth.” Alive with vividly rendered details of daily life in Los Angeles, filled with a sense of inexhaustible wonder and curiosity, illuminated by a deep reverence for the natural world, brimming with compassion and generosity, Monkey Journal is nothing less than a contemporary book of hours a twenty-first century Book of Changes, a daybook of the modern soul in conversation with the world. Reading it, we are both replenished and reminded how enter each day—and our own lives—more deeply, more attentively, and with more passionate engagement.”
—Alison Townsend
“After Holly Prado’s majestic selected poems, These Mirrors Prove It, it’s an added delight to encounter her in the more casual and playful setting of Monkey Journal. In this intimate chronicle of her days and nights, Prado keeps her own rock-solid, good-humored and frequently musical counsel. She’s a treasure.”
—Aram Saroyan
