Customer Reviews

Supplications: Immediate Poems of Loss and Love

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American poetry has been in great trouble since the close of WW 11, when
it became heavily politicized and,for all purposes, virtually dead. The
standard was held at some height -- but in a minor key -- by Marianne Moore, H.D. and James Merrill, among a small handful of others. Our American giants: Frost, cummings, Stevens, Pound had become numb with American academic sluff. The greatest American poet of them all, T.S. Eliot, had fled to England early on, finding there that 'history is now and England," for "a people without history is not redeemed from time." Eliot, who was published for the first time in Chicago's Poetry Magazine, did prognosticate and scry and seemed to amble as easily into the future with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Wasteland" as he would amble The Strand of a night thirsting for good talk and a bourbon. That was the American future he knew would come as surely as WW 11 was but an extension of WW 1, bad business having to be settled so the future he saw so clearly could be got on with. Now we know quite clearly that bad business is the order of the day and it is no metaphor. True poetry is largely impossible to create now. There is no foundation in academe or our broader 'culture' for it. Publicists posing as professors assign pc poetry so eviscerated of the blood of verse that it falls as dead from the page as yesterday's blog. How, then, did playwright Franco D'Alessandro 'make' (in Dante's terminology) this early book of blessedly real poetry? Surely he was freed from the blanketing ethos of the day by his keen awareness of it, moving from shade to light, his heart, mind and soul open to the urgent but gentle promptings of his Muse. Here the febrile strands of his life's endured suffering of death and loss are bravely woven in the unyielding light of an Assissian sun. Poetry, the real thing, is human truth. Unavoidably painful but
assembled in such a fashion as to engage a balancing act of genuine emotions, which makes of life not
a dark quagmire but a prize to be celebrated. This simple book holds the real thing. It is poetry.
Therefore it is light. And is that not what we need more of, always?

I simply adore the way D'Alessandro captures our soul and heart in these lovely well thought our poems. In these times all we really want is to fill our heart and he certainly manages that task.. Bravo to you!

What People Are Saying About...

SUPPLICATIONS




"D'Alessandro's poems possess what I value most -an emotional honesty and a keen wit."

-Olympia Dukakis (actress)



"In the immediacy of its expression, D'Alessandro's poetry articulates both the palpable urgency to live and the pensive potency to reflect on the past and on what has been... (He) seeks a correspondence, similar to that of French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire, between the earthly realm of human experiences to the interpretive realms of language."

-Pamela J. Rader (professor)



"It is as though D'Alessandro has invested millions in life and squeezes every penny returned. The poet sits in the middle of his poem (as he does in his plays) speaking loudly about persons who matter. It is healthy to be exposed to such passion!"

-Gregory Abels (director)



D'Alessandro's poetry inhabits that precious middle distance between the spiritual and corporeal. While being present and reflective at once, he reminds us that we are all fastened to this earth, to each other, and to our collective condition.

-Josh Joplin (singer-songwriter)



"Franco D'Alessandro's poems are a rich well for any person (artist or not) to draw from. These are deeply moving poems filled with wonderfully exciting language. He is an important poet and playwright for our generation"

-Suzanne Corso (author)