Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 104
- Language: English
- Date Published: January, 2019
- ISBN: 978-1-948017-30-5
Praise
David Giannini’s poems are as intricate as a hall of receding mirrors. Readers enter into these elemental, historical, and phenomenological poems only to find themselves indeed strangely blended, on an unexpected ride that skirts closely to revelation. Their extravagant playfulness— carried by rhymes, half-rhymes, inversions, and puns — takes us through logical conundrums, fables, and myths only to collide with a self relentlessly looking outwards and inwards. One never is sure if it’s the reader, the poet, or the work that is “scrambling up to grab you, not / by the throat, by the butt of a joke.” Interspersed amongst the humor and complexity — and for that reason all the more powerful — are poems that harness a striking spareness in response to contemporary landscapes of harshness, brutality, displacement, and grief. —Janet MacFadyen
From the first poem on, the reader is aware of David Giannini’s love of language: its music, sound and rhythms, its humorous possibilities, its ability to express the self interacting with the life presented to one, and how experience is conveyed, whether in recalling childhood memories or interactions with others. For Giannini, language is the medium of meaning and of locating meaning in historical oddities, in relationships, and even in his backyard wood pile. This book carries a world of weight that a reader will bear with joy. —Gary Metras
Excerpt
“His Head Aint Screwed on Right”
Like the filament popping before the lightbulb goes out
some inner turmoil was turning him dark
until he unscrewed his head (in the dark) with a shout
and tried to replace it with higher wattage
but still unlit because the electricity was shot
he continued feeling for his gear in the cottage
as he readied himself for a trek to the far
light downhill in the thirsty village
of bikers and in-laws a few no doubt
lying flat or staggering after a fight in the bar.
Author
David Giannini’s most recently published collections of poetry include THE FUTURE ONLY RATTLES WHEN YOU PICK IT UP and FACES SOMEWHERE WILD, both published by Dos Madres Press in 2017 and 2018; POROUS BORDERS published by Spuyten Duyvil Press in 2017; SPAN OF THREAD (Cervena Barva Press, 2015) and AZ TWO (Adastra Press,) a “Featured Book” in the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. His work appears in national and international literary magazines and anthologies, including New Hungers for Old: One-Hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. New Feral Press published15 of his chapbooks between 2011-18 including TRAVELING CLUSTER, and INVERSE MIRROR, a collaboration with artist, Judith Koppel;. His work appears in national and international literary magazines and anthologies. Awards include: Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Awards; The Osa and Lee Mays Award For Poetry; an award for prosepoetry from the University of Florida; and a 2009 Finalist Award from the Naugatuck Review. He has been a gravedigger; beekeeper; taught at Williams College, The University of Massachusetts, and Berkshire Community College, as well as preschoolers and high school students, among others. Giannini was the Lead Rehabilitation Counselor for Compass Center, which he co-founded as the first rehabilitation clubhouse for severely and chronically mentally ill adults in the northwest corner of Connecticut. www.davidgiannini.com
