Matt Buonocore could put a price on Our Love Is the Cure. He chose not to. The Kindle edition is permanently free, and his reason is short: "its message is more important than its price."
It's a fitting decision for a poet whose whole book argues that the things dividing us are thinner than they look.
A Poem Without a Decoder Ring
Buonocore is an independent
poet and author from Central New York, and he writes the kind of poetry you
don't need a literature degree to read. That's deliberate. He believes poetry
should be something people feel rather than decipher, so the language stays
plain and the feeling stays up front.
Our Love Is the Cure is a collection of spiritual and inspirational poems built on one idea: love and compassion can dissolve the barriers we imagine between ourselves and other people. He didn't arrive at that idea quickly. It grew out of his own experiences with suffering, healing, forgiveness, and change.
His thinking goes something like this. A lot of our pain comes from seeing ourselves as separate. We build identities out of our differences, our fears, and our beliefs, and we forget the humanity underneath. Love, as he sees it, is less an emotion than a way of relating to life. That doesn't mean pretending differences don't exist. It means those differences don't have to stop us from caring for each other.
What does he hope a reader feels at the end? A little less alone, a little kinder toward themselves and others, and maybe more aware of the love already around them.
From a Chant to a Page
Buonocore was twenty-three when he started writing poetry. He had been reading Paul Selig's The Book of Mastery, which pushed him to rethink how he understood himself and the world. Around the same time, he had an experience while chanting Ram that hit him hard. Poems began showing up as a way to say what he was discovering inside.
These days, writing works like meditation for him. Sometimes it helps him understand a feeling. Sometimes it turns up something he didn't know he was carrying.
Most poems arrive on their own. A phrase, an observation, or a quiet moment can start one, and he does a lot of walking and hiking, which gives ideas room to surface. He doesn't set out to produce anything specific. He stays open and follows the words. Then comes the craft: he goes back, checks the rhythm and clarity, and fixes what doesn't sit right. The one thing he refuses to do is edit away the feeling that started the poem.
One Journey, Several Books
Since that first poem, he has published several collections. Soothe the Soul offers comfort and encouragement. My Heart as the Map looks at how our inner lives can point us toward understanding. A Little Light is shorter and more direct, a set of affirmations meant to lift people up. He thinks of the books less as separate destinations and more as different stretches of the same road.
New readers should start with Our Love Is the Cure, he says. It's free, and it introduces the ideas that run through everything else he writes.
The Book He's Writing With His Grandmother
Outside of poetry, Buonocore works as a home health aide caring for his grandmother, Patricia. The two are writing a book together called No Time Wasted: Our Journey Through Dementia Together, told through poetry and personal reflection.
Caring for her has changed how he sees ordinary days. When someone you love is dealing with memory changes, he says, a conversation, a laugh, or a familiar story starts to carry real weight. He has come to believe a person's worth isn't measured by what they can remember or accomplish.
He hopes the book comforts families in similar situations. He also wants it to honor Patricia as the extraordinary person she is, rather than let dementia become her whole story.
For Anyone Having a Hard Time
Asked what he'd tell a reader who picks up his book in a rough season, Buonocore doesn't offer a fix. Whatever you're going through deserves compassion, he says, and you don't have to have it all figured out. Healing rarely follows the timeline we expect. Sometimes it starts with letting yourself feel what you feel, without judgment.
He pictures a stranger somewhere, maybe struggling, finding a poem that makes them feel understood. "If even one poem helps them feel a little less alone," he says, "then sharing it was worthwhile."
You can download Our Love Is the Cure free on Kindle, and follow Matt Buonocore on Instagram at @modern_sooth.