Your Particular Emotion Machine
The Pioneer Valley is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to readings and other poetry events these days. This week we’ll be treated to a reading by Peter Gizzi celebrating the publication of his breathtaking new collection THRESHOLD SONGS. The reading will take place Thursday, November 17, 8 pm, Memorial Hall, UMass Amherst. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly notes: Gizzi’s poems are filled with the same intricacies that enamor us of certain songs: the rhythmic flourishes startle but never betray his cadence, the timbres of his words share as much dissonance as they do harmony, and over everything is the lyric, the voice, speaking to us with urgency and occasion. Here’s one from the new collection (which also appears in the new issue of jubilat):
Lullaby
Everyone’s listening to someone in the air
and singing knows every chestnut from way out when
the mourning dawn of living each apple and every atom
in the tooth actually small circuits uncover vast spaces
even if invisible you see the picture field and the lightning
is there a difference between a photograph of a child
and what memorials what or what is the role of art if any
within your particular emotion machine
the limits of thought and seeing perhaps
it explains water is one way to apprehend air
the morning light is in us
a stinging charge in the mouth
this is something everyone feels at least once
here before you started listening to the song
at the beach and soldiers by a desert
if anybody looked we are all stranded by the shore of something
I mean to say seeing pictures inside as they are
Lisa Olstein will be having a reading at the Concord Public Library at 3pm on Sunday, November 20th.
[...] The Pioneer Valley is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to readings and other poetry events these days. This week we’ll be treated to a reading by Peter Gizzi celebrating the publication of his breathtaking new collection THRESHOLD SONGS. The reading will take place Thursday, November 17, 8 pm, Memorial Hall, UMass Amherst. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly notes: Gizzi’s poems are filled with the same intricacies that enamor us of certain songs: the rhythmic flourishes startle but never betray his cadence, the timbres of his words share as much dissonance as they do harmony, and over everything is the lyric, the voice, speaking to us with urgency and occasion. Here’s one from the new collection (which also appears in the new issue of jubilat): More… [...]