This is a summary page for my collections of poetry (and prose).
Full-Length Collections
#5 Dark Wind, Dark Water (Mind’s Eye Publishing, 2026) is a novel-length collection (58K) of 90 dark, cross-genre speculative short works of micro fiction, Drabbles, flash fiction, short-short stories, and short stories, as well as eight section-dividing poems that introduce the sections, and a published white paper on slipstream… that carry wisps and eddies of magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, and horror, which quickly develop turbulence deep into the stories. {Tentative cover, cost and availability forthcoming}
#4 Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024), a finalist (top 8) for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award (Humanities Tennessee), is a collection of poems infused with and inspired by Native North American Indian culture, history, and legend. A top 8 finalist for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award (and an Elgin Book Award nominee), Sacred Flute honors specific Native American nations whenever possible, at least by language groups. In many cases, the poems were directly influenced by those traditions of the represented Native American nations, but in other cases, when it was less clear, the sentiment was recognized as American Indian and an appropriate connection was sought and found. Each major section is also introduced by such. At times, the connection is made through an epigraph or in the body of the poem; at other times, it is through a postscript. Bibliographic and Internet sources that have influenced and/or informed these poems are cross-referenced with bracketed numbers in the body of work. Sacred Flute [Iris Press, Feb 2024] {$18}
#3 Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publications & Audio, 2023) is 2024 Weatherford Award nominee; a poetic celebration, eulogy, and metaphor for Appalachia. Sometimes it dances and laughs, but too many times it cries. It’s a vehicle to give voice to creation, a prayer, psalm or hymn of nature. It’s an echo of the past merging with the present. The mountains speak in these songs, the culture of Appalachia—food, family, religion & spirituality, a place of dreams, politics, ecology, and mining, but a place of loss, too, both of its people and their land—the desecration of that land, which is like cursing God. Place is as sacred as family. Depression, a byproduct, runs deep, as a vein of ore in a coal mine. Yet the heart is sometimes blacker than coal searching for the silver and gold threading it like false promises do. Sometimes there are no clear differences. For all the good and evil in our hearts, we love as deeply as we mourn, and that music of the mountains is a salve, as well as a song. Song of the Mountains [Middle Creek Publishing & Audio, Nov 2023] {$18}
#2 Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry “There are two constants in the poetry of John Mannone: love and science… And they are intertwined – his poems flow effortlessly between poles of desire and precious, precise knowledge. In the world of poetry, there is no one who can mine science for metaphor the way Mannone does. Nor move to love so naturally.” Roald Hoffmann, chemist and writer, professor emeritus at Cornell University, and co-recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. [The Linnet’s Wings Press, Feb 2022] {$15}
#1 “The poems in John Mannone’s Disabled Monstersare sensory-rich, narrated by a strong poetic voice and intense with emotional mystery. Mannone reveals a world of war, lost love, catastrophic illness, depression, and regret—so many of the sorrows humans inherit during life. Yet, in the evolution of these poems, Mannone’s honesty, his power of story, individual persona’s love and kindness, and above all, the courage to seek a prayerful life, help to disable these monsters. Every sun-filled dawn/I will steal its colors/and celebrate until/ my throat is crimsoned/with joy, Mannone writes in “Lilies & Morning Matins.” In “Light Blooms” this thought is echoed: No longer am I a child/of the dark. I have grown/into light and I now can see,/count each glimmer, touch each hope…I am not alone anymore. Readers of Disabled Monsters will celebrate a life’s renascence at the end of these poems.” Bill Brown is the author of nine poetry collections, including Elemental (3: A Taos Press, Nov 2014). The recipient of many fellowships, he has been a Bread Loaf Scholar and a professor at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.
Chapbook Collections
#6 Space Exploration: Strange New Worlds is a chapbook collection that poetizes literary journalism, science, science fiction, and science fantasy. The ventures into outer space are born out of mankind’s natural curiosity and perhaps also as a means of the anticipated survival of our species, but the exploration is tempered with a longing for home. At times, there is a nod to the human condition, ecological responsibility, and to the sacred beyond science. This collection strives to make literary poetry and genre poetry an inseparable fusion. Space Exploration: Strange New Worlds [Space Cowboy Books, Nov 2025] {$13}
#5 Coffee Poems is a chapbook collection of sixteen poems that embraces coffee in a wide variety of applications, though hardly exhaustive. This includes the origin of coffee, traditions, obsessions or rituals, common associations (and uncommon ones), a bit of science, mixology, metaphor, and others. The collection also presents a variety of forms in addition to the standard lineated free verse poems: prose poems, personal essay/didactic poem, Duplex Sonnet in prose poem format, Erasure poem (presented two ways), Fibonacci sequences poem, a poem whose genesis is from the “opposites game,” and a Golden Shovel with a Cento epigram. Some poems have a backstory below the text. Coffee Poems: The Art of Waking [Island of Wak-Wak Press, Apr 2025] {$15} https://islandofwakwak.com/coffee-poems.html
#4 Speculative Christmas Poems As Senior Poetry Editor for Abyss & Apex, I have contributed a seasonal poem every January issue since 2015. Enjoy the compilation of these seasonal poems, most of which have a tie to Christmas. [self-published Jan 2025] https://jcmannone.wordpress.com/speculative-christmas-poems/ {Free download}
#3 Holy Week Poems [self-published, Apr 2022] {Free, download} https://jcmannone.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/holy-week-poems-a-chapbook_rev-6.pdf
#2 The Metaphorical Moon [Poetry Superhighway, Dec 2021] {Free, download} https://jcmannone.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/poetry-super-highway_chapbook_mannone.pdf
#1 Apocalypse won 3rd place for the 2017 Elgin Book Awards and garnered a Bram Stoker nomination. “Mannone excels with this fantastic collection in poetry containing a wide array of apocalyptic possibilities, each piece as poignant, tender, or powerful as the next. A must-have for science fiction lovers and scientists alike. I was swept away with lines such as That day, the ground tore open,/and the skies wept. (Lines from “Skeletal Remains,” Part 3: War)” Marge Simon, Bram Stoker Award® winning author of VECTORS: A Week in the Death of a Planet, 2007. [Hiraeth Publishing/Alban Lake Publishing, Jul 2015] {$6}https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/this-is-apocalypse-by-john-c-mannone
John C. Mannone: The Art of Poetry 