SOLO CONCERT
My poetry collection Solo Concert was published by Serving House Books on January 10, 2025! You can order it through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and (in Hungary) Libristo.
These forty-eight poems—sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, blank verse, syllabic verse, free verse, and more—all have to do, directly or indirectly, with music. From "Hiding Places" to "Echoes of Sparrows" to "Weathered Banderole," the poems of Solo Concert play with and against each other.
The cover design is adapted from Wassily Kandinsky, Levels (1929), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Upcoming Events
Stay tuned for updates!
Past Events
London, March 1, 2025, 1:00 p.m.: We had a lovely conversation about Solo Concert at the Poetry Café, a Covent Garden venue within the home of The Poetry Society (22 Betterton Street). Many thanks to everyone who joined and to the Poetry Café!
Szolnok, February 5, 2025, 2:35 p.m.: Marianna Jeneiné Fekete and I held a reading and discussion at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium.
Budapest, February 6, 2025, 18:00: Csenger Kertai and I held an event at Massolit Books in Budapest.
Szolnok, February 25, 2025, 4:30 p.m.: Gyula Jenei and I held a reading and discussion at the Verseghy Ferenc Könvtár (Ferenc Verseghy Public Library). Here are some photos.
Online, January 19, 2025 (the start time varies by zone): I held an Zoom event to celebrate the book's release. Thanks to everyone who came!
Interview
On January 31, 2025, my conversation with William K. Lawrence about Solo Concert was aired on The Purpose Tree. Listen to it here.
Reviews
Cybèle Troyan, "Resonant and haunting," Amazon.de, March 22, 2025.
Chris Mikesell, "Solo Concert," Diogenes in Gotham, January 24, 2025.
A. A. Rubin, "Book Review: Solo Concert, by Diana Senechal," A. A. Rubin (blog), January 17, 2025.
William Lawrence, "Solo Concert," Goodreads, January 10, 2025.
Endorsements
Diana Senechal is a great and original poet, with one eye on tradition and one astringent, compassionate eye on what really is — here in the shadowy now. Her presence, it's almost an ache, is deeply compelling and moving.
— Rick Moody, author of Hotels of North America
Solo Concert is centered on music, but more the delicate interstices—"the unheard hosanna," "bells in a slant of sun"—than blaring crescendos. These poems are listeners rather than talkers. Senechal's poetic voice, often humble and disarming ("I'm still learning to talk"), is ultimately inexorable ("I must occur"). In "Jackrabbit," she imagines a roadkill rabbit the instant before death in the headlights asking itself "what if, what if." Solo Concert has this kind of immediacy: the poet as large-eared conduit staying open to "the roar of things I do not understand." It's a tremendous debut collection.
— John Wall Barger, author of The Elephant of Silence
A poem by Diana Senechal is smart, witty, and resourceful. Also it boasts a stone-like integrity. And Solo Concert, subtly coherent and evidently unified by theme, is itself like a "multitude" of stones on a gravestone, placed there by pilgrims, in concert evoking "songs" in the "kindred air," hosannas perhaps of "holy gadflies."
— David Havird, author of Weathering: Poems and Recollections
The voice lurking behind everyday things is like meaning. If we try to grasp it by force, it always slips through our fingers. However, if we give up control and allow it to slip away, we too can become listeners to a world where meaning begins to take shape without us. Yet it always and continuously pertains to us. Diana Senechal's poems are beautiful imprints of this music.
— Csenger Kertai, author of B. rövid élete ("The Short Life of B.")
Mentions
The Massachusetts Review mentioned Solo Concert in Contributor Publications, Winter 2024–2025." Thank you, MR!
