Pleased to see my book "Turn Out the Light' was chosen as a finalist in the Eric Hoffer 2018 Book Awards.

"If music be the food of love, play on,

give me excess of it that surfeiting, the

appetite may sicken, and so die.”

                              -- William Shakespeare

“One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain.”

                              -- Bob Marley

 “Music, the ‘art of the muses,’ with its magical combinations of a handful of singular notes, can exalt, enthrall, inspire, thrill and exhilarate the senses. It can soothe the savage beast, console the dispirited and gladden a weary heart.”                                    -- John A. Brennan

In his latest book titled “Turn out the Light,” Irish Author and Poet John Anthony Brennan takes us on a nostalgic magic carpet ride that begins in Ireland with ‘Radio Caroline’ and the pirate ships afloat on the North Sea, all the way to the heady heights of the birth of the ‘rock-n-roll’ revolution in ‘swinging’ London, just as the world was about to change forever.  

“Turn out the Light” is a selection of tributes to the musicians who died while still young, many of whom the author met briefly, during the seminal days of the late sixties-early seventies in London. In “Turn out the Light,” Brennan, whose “Don’t Die with Regrets” was chosen as best memoir in the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, pays homage to the music and the musicians who healed his mind and saved his soul, with his unique combination of free-verse narrative and poetic musings.  

John A. Brennan opens this excellent book of poetry, "Turn Out The Light," with an introduction sharing his personal joy and investment in the book's subject matter: music. He does the reader an enormous favor in that regard on page five with the heading Back Then. As a result, what stunning prose is delivered for the reader from pages five through seven. His beautiful, scintillating writing abounds: makes word-magic for what will eventually captivate us: the book's charming, well conceived poems.Brennan has chosen to write about the blues and rock and roll world of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, The Doors, Robert LeroyJohnson; and its iconic legion of genius practitioners Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Lennon, Alan (blind owl) Wilson, et cetera. Before each poem, there's a tribute to the artist, and then a poem of reverence, accomplishment, and deeds.

This book solidifies each artist's place in musical history through form and memory.

A great read.

Turn out the Light” is for sale at: 

https://www.amazon.com/author/johnabrennan