Beautiful Signor [Paperback]

Cyrus Cassells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997

A trenchant search for beauty amidst a world ravaged by cruelty.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's hard to say what the first human emotion was, but Cyrus Cassells's Lambda Award-winning book of love poems, Beautiful Signor, makes a strong case for erotic longing. Cassells's narrative arc begins with "The Magician-Made Tree," in which the dejected American speaker meets the Beautiful Signor, a young man from Venice. These Venetian poems read like philosophy interrupted by seduction, with clothes flying off characters and dawn arriving too early (attempting in verse what Harold Brodkey achieved in his novel Profane Friendship). As the lovers travel throughout the Mediterranean, the speaker's passion for the Venetian spins out of control, culminating in "The Fool, The Foreigner." Here, his emotions find a correlative in his lines, rising to a lavish Sufi ecstasy; from this tightly wound height, they can only unravel like wicker, as in the section "after, morning":

Amid scattered
bedclothes, dawn-lit
empty bottles, you sing
at my awakening...

Lift me from the armor
born of moments
full of sting
when my daft, abraided heart
felt no one's beloved.

Despite the speaker's lyrical power, the Beautiful Signor is ultimately unattainable, just as his relatives--Dante's Beatrice, Shakespeare's young lover, Ovid's fickle beauties--fell out of reach. Indeed, Dante's question underlies much of this book's soul-searching: "How could such a woman as Beatrice exist?" "Beatrice exists," is Cassells's answer, but in the final poem, "Amalgam," he's not so sure. The book's best qualities, however, lie outside the narrative in Cassells's line-by-line craft, such as "Today we embraced under a branch / in mummyish Linari." Although AIDS is never mentioned explicitly, the speaker's voice emerges from a backdrop of tragedy. In a world of wounded bodies, Cassells reclaims an idea of salvation through erotic love. --Edward Skoog

From Library Journal

Poets have been writing about love since poem-making began. Yet they continue to find words that heighten and intensify the experience, as this powerful and splendid volume attests. Cassells writes as an African American living in Rome (and touring other parts of Europe) and profoundly in love: "even my downfalls,/ my cat's cradle compromises,/ even my abysses,/ were my path to you." These poems, many of them delicately erotic, celebrate the mirroring of self in the beloved, the joy of mutuality, the heightened awareness that results from passionate love: "paint my heart the red,/ of a red-winged blackbird." Throughout, Cassells delights in the union of souls. His beloved is an Italian man, the "beautiful Signor" of the title, and their bliss is echoed in their environment: "Now the mountains come close/ with their hint/ of Switzerland, their fresh/ bridles of snow." The union of these two lovers contains a highly spiritual element, a suggestion that one may behold the deity in the person of the beloved ("hold me as you would hold/ the body of Christ"). Cassells is a passionate poet whose poems touch the core of human connection through which can flow union with the infinite. Highly recommended.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press; 1st edition (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556591241
• ISBN-13: 978-1556591242
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Gay

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The "Love Poem" lives., November 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Beautiful Signor (Paperback)

A very close friend of mine, having just recently heard Cyrus Cassells read some of these poems, recommended I read this book. Since she is a rather astute and stringent critic and rarely recommends books of verse, I bought the book a few days later. Having just completed it, I can see why she was so impressed. Cassells' BEAUTIFUL SIGNOR is a collection of love poems composed in the style of the Troubadour, where the term lyric is ever true-these poems are the songs of a devotee. Cassells' descriptions are exacting, his metaphors fresh, interesting. But always there is the physical obsession of love, and this lover of details gives us a poetry that is both beautiful and sharp. In an age where gay love poetry borders on smut, how wonderful to find poems such as these: so quiet, so sensual, so finely-crafted. Cyrus Cassells' first book, THE MUD ACTOR, was a selection of the 1982 National Poetry Series and his second, SOUL MAKE A PATH THROUGH SHOUTING, was awarded the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. //C. Dale Young, Associate Editor of NEW ENGLAND REVIEW.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars read twice then judge the quality, March 20, 2001

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beautiful Signor (Paperback)

Cyrus Cassels other books of poetry (The Mud Actor & Soul Make a Path through Shouting) are both exquisite books of poetry - books that deserve all the attention they received by the prize-granting organizations. In reading Beautiful Signor, I initially felt that Cassels had made his first misstep - too erudite a vocabulary and sensuality without substance. The first concern, vocabulary, was justified at points. The second concern proved to be unjustified. As one progresses through the book, one discovers that the sensuality has substance - it is the sensuality of love as in the Song of Solomon or of Medieval "Bride of Christ" poetry or of Rumi's "Beloved". Cassels does not step outside his 20th century experience nor does he claim to be a mystic - rather he writes of the sensual pleasure that points towards, gives hints of, the relationship of poet to the transcendent.

Having read to the end, I could then reread the earlier poems in a much different light - and for the second reading, this is vintage, excellent Cyrus Cassels. He is a contemporary poet everyone with an interest in contemporary poetry should know.