Boyertown PA
4-13-2026 12:23am

April 13: One-a-Day in Celebration of National Poetry Month--Phil Repko Publishes Second Book

Phil Repko announces the publication of Homestretch, his second book of poetry that opens with the poem below. Fellow poet John Yamrus offers a robust endorsement. 

Wholesome

A force organic wends its way
through fabric stitched by young,
nostalgic thread.
All present air is toxic,
laced with chemicals
that fog the sight and cloud the sky.

So, airing any laundry, whether digital or ripe,
is risky in a rough and tumble world.
Some microscopic bits and bytes,
impervious to trends,
may latch with death grips onto bygone dreams
and split their seams.

I think we seek what’s wholesome
while we slouch and make our way
through golden days and years lived bittersweet.
A constant filter whispers in our ears,
or taps our shoulder –
drawing vision toward the grease and grime
we cannot wash away without
a dose of caustic lye.

Deliberate.
With surgical precision, we scrub up.

Let’s face a simple fact –
The world would thrive
If natural, honest, clean would finish first;
A fresh and rosy cheek, a sparkled eye,
a myth or two that keep the magic bright:
delusions duly kept will hold alive
the secret, silk beliefs, maintained despite
a sharp, enflamed, persistent, reddened stye,
which steals away the glitter from the sky.

~Phil Repko


Introduction by John Yamrus

Stripped down, at its deepest core, poetry is all about Truth. Of course it is. That goes without saying. But it’s also about something else...about promise and possibility. When I get done reading a book I really like, the first thing I think after turning the final page is what’s next? What’s this writer gonna come up with that can equal or top this?

In a way, that’s sort of a selfish way to think, but at the end of the day, isn’t reading really a very selfish act? Isn’t all writing about how it affects the reader personally? I mean, you sit in a corner somewhere, maybe with a drink in your hand or on the table next to you, and maybe some music playing and a nice light coming in thru the window, and there you sit...all alone...just you and your book and the promise and possibility that lurks there at the beginning and also at the end. That’s the thought that crosses my mind at every single final page. Does this writer have another gear in them?

So, that’s what I was thinking when I finished PIECES OF APRIL, Phil Repko’s excellent first book. That was an interesting work. Sure, it was a first book, but it wasn’t a young man’s book. First off, Repko was no kid when he published it. I don’t know how old he was, but I’ve met the man, and he was no young kid.

More importantly, though, PIECES OF APRIL was the work of an artist fully formed and totally confident in his ability to do what he does.

I really liked that book. Really liked it.

When I finished reading it, I was excited to think about what would be the next step for this man who already had a very definite and interesting voice and personality. Can I say it? He was already in full possession of a persona.

Pretty much every single writer out there, starting out, has a certain amount of copycat in them. That’s inevitable. That’s part of the process. As an artist, you find someone or something that means something to you, and says something to you, and you imitate it, and try to take it to the next level. To create something uniquely your own, and new. Think of John Coltrane playing in Miles Davis’s band.

But, PIECES OF APRIL was already there. It just was. It was elemental and basic and just plain there.

Like a great big rock in the road...it just was.

And, after I finished it, I selfishly wondered how long I’d have to wait for the next one. Would there even be a next one? Like I said, Repko is no kid. I know what it takes to create such work, so I thought I’d have to wait a good long time to see what the next book would be like.

And now, just about a year or so later, he comes out with this new one, and it’s amazing to see how quickly he changed from a wonderfully talented first book author...a writer with his own voice and his own style, magically morphing into a grizzled, almost nostalgic writer, looking back over his shoulder thru the cobwebs of his life. Happily...interestingly...these poems give off the very definite feeling of age...like old mahogany rubbed to a warm fine lustre. They feel sepia-toned and slightly cracked around the edges. They’re worn, but not tired. They feel old, but not out of date.

And such LINES! Stuff to make one stay awake at night, thinking...wondering...considering. Consider this:

I am fat. I am spoiled.
Just like America,
only I know it.
America does not.

And this, from one of my favorites...the brief, but jarring “Imperceptible Motion”:

The path to Valhalla is overgrown 
 with ground cover.

Never afraid to speak his truth, Repko doesn’t shy from weighing in on the events of the day that to some happen outside one’s emotional realm...but, for Phil Repko, everything is fair game. Everything is on the table and needs to be considered. This line refuses to look away from the tragedies in Palestine, from “For a Crust of Bread”:

My daughter, Salwa, is three-years old and very sick.
A woman I just met is the only one helping her.
I cannot enter the hospital, as the bombs have rained down there.
They have no consistent power

                                                                                     Just like Palestine.

Like the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Ocean...this book is there...it just is. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. This is, after all, an introduction, and the purpose of such things is to tell you a little bit about the book and to get you excited about it...to build it up, and even sell it a little. But if you’re reading this, you probably already bought it, and you’re on your porch with a drink and the music and the sun and you don’t need me to be telling you much of anything. Everything you need to know about it is in the poems you are about to read.

Repko’s said it all.

Sure, that’s putting a lot of emotional and spiritual weight on one man’s shoulders...one writer’s shoulders. But these poems and this writer are strong and real...they can take it. And you, dear reader? You can, too.

November 2025

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