David Giannini is a formidable poet of both short and prose poems. Recently, Feral Press has published an astonishing number of his books, seven in the last year, showing their dedication to David's fine work. The book at hand, Felt in a Heartbeat, consists of 8 brief poems and, counting the cover illustration, 7 beautiful artworks by Judith Strauss Koppel. The cover is pictured above and 2 poems, each individually illustrated, pictured below.
The first poem confirms for me my own personal Jungian leanings, and the second our collective membership to that unique, and occasionally, as here, breathtakingly beautiful club known as the human race.
Yes, sadness and suffering can shatter the human heart, but spirit and beauty and poetry go a long way to healing it. These 8 poems, with subtly stunning art, do that and more.
Click to zoom in
Click to zoom in
Felt in a Heartbeat is a limited run of 100 copies and is available from Feral Press, (P.O. Box 358, Oyster Bay, NY 11771) for $8. Contact John and Joan Digby and let them know where you saw it. That would please David and myself.
If you'd rather get a copy direct from the poet, drop David an email at <davidgpoet AT gmail DOT com> or snail mail at PO Box 562, Becket, MA 01223. In the former case, make a check out to "John Digby," in the later to "David Giannini."
This post contains some poems and photographs in tribute to Theodore Enslin, by fellow poets and friends Ed Baker, David Giannini, and John Phillips, as well as a poem by the poet himself. In addition, there is also a link to a brief obituary (and an excerpt from same) and a recording of Brahms Intermezzo, Opus 18, No. 2, which Theodore Enslin requested be played in lieu of a memorial service or other type of observance.
“let me tell you a
"story
"about that chair you’re sitting in
"I call it The Low Down Chair
“it was many years ago now.
“She was a Catholic girl.
“Very pretty.”
& then he took a snap of me w my
little Kodak Instan-matic.
“In THAT LOW DOWN CHAIR
“SHE
“& It was many years ago
“& lots of poems-into-books came
“afterwards.”
“and the cane?”
“It’s one that I made.
“I make them. Sell them.
“That’s how I got to be so rich.
“Selling canes. Selling poems.”
a short time later
we walked his property to that Old Pine
“There’s a story in that Old Pine
“You sure take a lot of pictures.
"I’m hungry. You hungry?
“I know a place in town. Great Haddock Chowder
“Ever eat a Bloomin' Onion? Big as a basketball.”
At the diner he flirted w the cute waitress
who
knew his ways & means
made Love with spoon in chowder
Ed Baker
Here are three poems by David Giannini:
THREE POEMS to TED (THROUGH the YEARS)
1 1.AUDUBON
SANCTUARY, WELLFLEET
Beyond sanctuary
the sea
“so quick to feel surprise and shame”
of waves at
crest that suspense
suspension where
the soul feels
the soul feels its mirrors mirrors
of salt of our
bodies of our blood
of instants of
the moon of the tides
spreading us to
grains and with
“The earth under
our feet we are
not asked to begin
nowhere”—
we stand on
belief and sand
then step this
way to the marsh.
2. MAYBE SONG
Maybe if you tell it the wind will stop maybe
the long wind if you tell will stop banging its
bells. Maybe the wind will stop if you slip
into the wind silence that wants in maybe
bell longing will come. Maybe your silence
lives inside the will of the wind maybe in
long bells hiding from ruthless interims
of eye. Maybe if you spy them the bells will
stop maybe the long bells if you spy them
will stop if you will. Maybe if you slip into
the silence the wind that wants in will spy
a forest being maybe many still trees. Maybe
if you feel it being tall pine air maybe the
being will be silent ruthless interims of ear.
3.
To age
and move uneasily
to become
more
adventuresome
in mind (assuming
the
necessary
foolishness,
the course
and
curse of it)
despite macular de-
generation
and
the falling
to ground, then
abed,
and the final jit-
tery track of
being
what you always were,
Ted.
David Giannini
A poem and a photograph of Theodore Enslin by John Phillips:
Anyone who knew Ted will be familiar with his desire to have the last word -- so here it is:
"In
lieu of a memorial service or other observances, I would prefer that
concerned friends in thinking of me might listen to or perform, the
Brahms Intermezzo, Opus 118 #2, whenever it might occur to them as
appropriate. To me, that one short piece sums up what I might have hoped
to achieve in a life in art."
The Way Desideratum
Goodbye, but not
goodbye again.
I do not leave you--
land behind me
in the land ahead.
I step the curve,
and curve enough
returns.
Theodore Enslin
Photo courtesy of Ed Baker
---------------------------------
from the thin curve
of the sickle moon...
one leaf falls
The high quality small press publisher, Adastra Press, has just published a new book by the poet, David Giannini, entitled AZ Two: Words of Travel. The book is an excellent example of fine quality, handset publishing. The edition is limited to 220 copies, is "handset Monotype Garamond type, letterpress printed on archival quality Mohawk Superfine text, handsewn with a Classic Laid Duplex recycled cover and illustrated with Sinagua Indian designs and petroglyphs, printed in different hand-mixed colors."
Yes, this is small press publishing surviving and thriving in the 21st century with beauty, class, and lyrical resonance.
The publisher describes the poems as a suite of 25 inspired by the Sedona, Arizona area and the Sinagua Indian culture that once resided there and eventually disappeared. As a set, the poems have the feel of a lyrical travel journal, recounting the visitors encounter with the land and the spirit it emanates. It opens with an invocation that honors that:
------Dawn hills black take on sky rouge and pink ---keep it all day in rock ----at dusk give it back
Inevitably, Giannini touches on the meeting of cultures, the lost Sinagua and today's modern desert migration and its attendant incursions. Here though what may be, and indeed in later poems is, portrayed as a clash is rendered as transcendence:
Feel of the Desert
We walk into silence and nothing
in this air feels heavy.
Breath with breath hand in hand
we weigh only ourselves.
Who can prove we are not the spirits
of this we move through?
Each word precisely put, step-by-step, as the poet/narrator moves we feel a presence, within and without. In the following, Giannini again senses something beyond the ordinary, perhaps just an elderly, confused man or a spirit of an age long gone, yet psychically contiguous:
---
---A Sound Inside the Rain
The rasp of something —owning very little—
--perhaps an old man -----filing the edge
--of his voice, wanting --------to receive
----and be received ---—----only if
-------outside of ----------rain.
Outside the rain, inside the rain. What resonates here, makes me think ghost, really - it is the name Sinagua, the name of the tribe that survived for so many years in the desert, the name which means "without water."
Without rain.
Perhaps something of a maxim, the following truly captures the dovetailing of cultures, together but forever separate, feeding each other: a model of nature itself -
Indians Selling Turquoise
The higher the place
the lower the price.
"Wupatki" captures a very similar feeling in a much different way:
—Wupatki
At day's end feel the ruin a- ban- don the site- seers.
I often ask life-long learners I instruct and in the library discussion group I'm a part of "where does the poem turn," and, in this case, it literally pirouettes on the word abandon, divided into its syllabic essences for emphasis. But as in "Indians Selling Turquoise" both cultures are touched here and it isn't just the easy dismissal of our modern culture, which literally and metaphysically knows how to abandon everything. The site has abandoned the seers and if that doesn't resonant, nothing in this world ever will.
The syllabic break (or perhaps true hyphenation, since "site-seers" perfectly stands in for the more common "sightseers") of "site-seers" is almost percussive, like the boom of the firework after the light.
Here is a great example of the form being dictated by the content, no mere structural gimmick from the poets sack of illusions.
As a set, there is something redemptive blended with the melancholy here, making AZ Two a great addition to any small press collection of high quality poetry. An earlier edition of the book, published by John Martone's excellent tel-let press, is available in pdf form online; the sequencing of the earlier edition is different than this print edition, something I'm sure the poet did not do lightly. The physical book is available via Small Press Distribution(1-800-869-7553), amazon and directly from the publisher at:
Adastra Press 16 Reservation Road Easthampton, MA 01027
The price from the publisher is $18.00, plus $2.50 for shipping. Of course, there are copies available at abebooks and amazon at a reduced rate. As a matter of policy, I've made it a point not to direct people to amazon, but for a book like this exceptions are made.
Do remember, supporting a small press publisher like Adastra directly, which might cost you a couple of bucks more, yields untold benefits as it echoes on through the culture for years to come.
Just saying ...
best, Don
PS If you are a small press publisher or poet and would like to have your poetry collection (chapbook or book) considered for review or notice on Issa's Untidy Hut, feel free to send a review copy along to the Lilliput Review address. Of course, there is no guarantee it will be reviewed or noted on the blog. Review chances increase exponentially if the poetry is in my area of expertise : the short poem. Collections by poets published in Lillie are always welcome.
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