REVIEWS
"If you ever saw Sugar Ray Leonard with his smile and soft demeanor, you’d think what a gentle man he is. But then if you saw him dance and punch in the boxing ring, well, you’d be impressed at his beauty, speed, and power. Heroux’s poems in The Sea Never Drowns are like Sugar Ray. They seem simple and at ease, for the most part, but there is an accretion of images and thoughts in each poem that culminate in strong ends."
—Redactions
"What is admirable about Heroux's approach is his recalcitrant denial of the ordinary, even within the mundane. ... If you're looking for writing that will tilt your worldview just enough to wake new brain cells, this is the chapbook for you. Highly recommended."
—Fight These Bastards
"The pages, beautifully bound by Buffalo-based Sunnyoutside Press, are filled with clocks that tick away in silent houses whose windows give back light to an outside world populated by impoverished trees typically set in a dying fall or frozen winter landscape. ... At its heart, Heroux’s gift—however existential or surreally humanistic—lies in the transformation of ways of seeing the world, of analyzing it and of language. The poems themselves, in their unique ways of seeing, are humbling at the same time they are refreshing."
—Prick of the Spindle
"Jason Heroux has a unique way of looking at the world, marked by sensory imagery and bittersweet—maybe just bitter—observations. Anyone leading the ordinary, workaday life, possessing the ability to look at things objectively, will see truth and familiarity in Heroux's weary world. Comes with a beautiful cardstock cover featuring a watercolour illustration by artist Doni Connor."
—MONDOmagazine
"Jason Heroux takes one on a journey through what could be considered mundane happenings in life if they were not all laden with an array of haunting images. He artfully animates objects and weather patterns into living, breathing images. Each poem, no matter how small, finds the sadness of life that hides in the space below the surface most of us see. The poems themselves are not depressing yet are dark enough to make one think with a far off stare that often accompanies deep sadness. ... The book is a slow moving melancholy that creeps its way into your very being. At times, I found my eyes wet with tears, with a heaviness in my chest that made me clutch the book to me. I have not been so moved by a collection of words in a long time."
—The Guild of Outsider Writers
"I enjoyed Heroux’s The Sea Never Drowns, not only for its catch-you-off-guard-in-a-good-way images and its thought-firing style but for the surrealism that these latter two create. ... Cryptic without being obtuse, inventive without being MFA obscure. ... The Sea Never Drowns is right up the alley for buffs of the sensible and the off-the-wall. And readers who like the everyday shook up. This chapbook of twenty poems is worth the read and many re-reads."
—Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
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