In praise of HEART MURMURS:   

"John Vanek's poetry displays an admirable range of subject matter and style.  He charms the reader with imagery and wry humor.  Heart Murmurs is a very welcome collection from a confident, compelling poet."  —Beth Ann Fennelly, Pushcart Prize winner, and author of Unmentionables.   

“With humor, sympathy, and an eye for what makes us most human, John Vanek offers us a far-ranging view of life that feels hard-earned and complete.”  —Elton Glaser, recipient of the Ohioana Book Award and Marlboro Prize in Poetry, and author of Here and Hereafter. 

“What I like most about the poems in John Vanek's first collection is his commitment to the poetics of clarity.  Things are said straight in these poems, with careful attention to illuminating what the poet calls "a shelter for my shifting life," by which he means our lives as well.”  —Bruce Weigl, Pulitzer Prize nominee, Pushcart Prize winner, and author of Song of Napalm. 

“In Heart Murmurs, John Vanek visits life's essential counties -- Longing, Love, Lament -- and there locates both faith and wonder.  These are poems that search the heartland, and those who reside therein, for sense and constancy through language that both surprises and emboldens, poems that do not expect miracles but wish them for us all the same.”  —Lou Suarez, Red Mountain Award winner, and author of Ask.

John (Jack) Vanek is a physician and award winning poet.  He has published four dozen poems and read his work at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, and Eckerd College in Florida.  In 2002, his poem, “The People’s Republic,” was inducted into the permanent collection of the George Bush Presidential Library, and reprinted in Red, White and Blues:  Poets on the Promise of America by the University of Iowa Press.