Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 108
- Language: English
- Date Published: October 2024
- ISBN 978-1-962847-11-7
Praise
“Esteemed poet and translator Daniel Shapiro gifts us with a compelling and achingly beautiful collection, Among of the Crags of the Eyrie. The collection is a map and a treasure-chest with confessional poems, like “Burning,” in which a youth seeks to burn the gray, mundane world, or verses shifting between family secrets, Guadalajara, the bright cafes of Buenos Aires, Poland. Others stream as light glistening on Vermeer interiors. Shapiro deftly showcases poems of personal experience alongside more hermetic and shorter verse, yet it is his assured voice that sweeps us up in his legacy of wind, sabbath wine, savannahs, even the Ostriches of Pasadena from yesteryear! This is keen verse, crafted to perfection, jewels to glisten in the gloom and reveal how there are openings and doors everywhere when we are summoned to the garden of stone.” —Anthony Seidman, author of That Beast in the Mirror / Cette bête dans le miroir
“As a whole, the volume [Child with a Swan’s Wings] masterfully portrays the author’s relationship with language, with poetry, and with his content, which does not fall short of encapsulating the universe itself. . . . Daniel Shapiro has written a work that clearly comes from an experienced poet. It is worth the read not just for its commentary on poetry and language but also for the pleasure that its poems yield.” —Doug Holder, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
“Shapiro’s poetry has authority, unaffected confidence, and surprising humor. His ego disappears into lively observation and wit informed by imagination.” —Barry Wallenstein, author of Drastic Dislocations: New and Selected Poems
Excerpt
This Poem
This poem will not protect you
or fill a room with laughing children,
won’t build you a torso and limbs
to cradle you through the night.
This poem won’t make oleanders bloom,
sprinkle the air with jasmine perfume,
won’t spell out a name on the wind,
burnished skin tipped with gossamer wings.
But a finger tracing these words
might reveal you were here,
what your eyes saw, the music you played
(jolly ballads, serenades, a flight of strings),
what you sketched into fourteen lines,
the grit and odor of your days.
Author
Photo by Elsa Ruiz
Daniel Shapiro is the author of three previous poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: The Red Handkerchief and Other Poems (2014), Woman at the Cusp of Twilight (2016), and Child with a Swan’s Wings (2018). He is the translator of Cipango, by Chilean poet Tomás Harris (Bucknell University Press, 2010), which received a starred review in Library Journal; of Missing Persons, Animals, and Artists, by Mexican author Roberto Ransom (Swan Isle Press, 2017); and of Kokoro: A Mexican Woman in Japan, by scholar Araceli Tinajero (Escribana, 2018). His poems, prose, and translations have been published in various journals and anthologies. He has been awarded translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN. Shapiro is a Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages & Literatures at The City College of New York, CUNY, where he serves as Editor of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas.
