Charles Rammelkamp reviews David Giannini’s Lamp of Whispers – New and Selected Prosepoems in the journal London Grip Poetry Review.
David Giannini’s Thoreauvian meditations range from observations about the lives of cats (“Mina & Maya,” “Mina & Plato”), through “Being” in its widest sense (“The Hairless Way of Being”) to simple physical being (“M.R.I.,” a reflection on his arm – “My left arm is an idiot.”). Then again they range from winter (“Love on Ice,” “A Sense of Eternity in Winter”) via literature and art (“The Artist,” “Every Poet’s an Amateur,” “Rereading Old Masters and Translations”) to the vicissitudes and the beauty of the natural world (“The Raccoons Are Setting Out,” “The Work in Every Season Now,” “After Another Big Rain”). For really, the “prosepoems” (Giannini’s preferred spelling / description of the selections in Lamp of Whispers) are introspective contemplations of himself and the world around him in the manner of that other New England philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. The book is a “new and selected” compilation, with pieces from eight previous volumes dating back a decade to 2015’s Span of Thread as well as over forty new selections.
