Overview

Poetry. Italian American. What a pleasure it is to read these unadorned yet carefully observed poems by Matthew Cariello. TALK wages a lyrical conversation with the self, the everyday, and the natural world where hard-won realizations are in perfect balance with a nature that becomes primal because it is so effortlessly welcomed. There are no easy epiphanies, or grandiose posturing here, instead we gain insight from an integrated narrative impulse that subtly engages and delights. The birch tree, the fig trees, pigeons, and swallows, a walk to a delicatessen, trips to an old bookstore, and even an otherworldly shovel emerge as emblems without sacrificing their utility and order in the poet's refined imaginary.--Peter Covino

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9781599541396

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What a pleasure it is to read these unadorned yet carefully observed poems by Matthew Cariello. Talk wages a lyrical conversation with the self, the everyday, and the natural world where hard-won realizations are in perfect balance with a nature that becomes primal because it is so effortlessly welcomed. There are no easy epiphanies, or grandiose posturing here, instead we gain insight from an integrated narrative impulse that subtly engages and delights. The birch tree, the fig trees, pigeons, and swallows, a walk to a delicatessen, trips to an old bookstore, and even an otherworldly shovel emerge as emblems without sacrificing their utility and order in the poet's refined imaginary. --Peter Covino Readers will find themselves returning to Cariello's poems for many helpings. --Pegi Deitz Shea, author of The Whispering Cloth: A Refugee's Story The poems in Talk offer mosaics of syntax: precise, evocative, and seemingly lit from within. Matthew Cariello displays the names in the corners of rooms, local words, phrases from memory. This is a collection of poems rich with affection, clarity, and talent. --Stephen Kuusisto You will recognize Matt Cariello as a true poet when you find yourself enchanted by a phrase or line, then another and another, each one crystalline. Swallows in this book are like 'bullets with love for their target.' A mockingbird's song repeats 'I don't believe I will die.' A jellyfish is a string of things lined up: 'my venomous balloon/ holy water/ radiant stone/ lidless eye, moon, blood.' Cariello possesses Neruda's pleasure in things, an explorer's eye, a taste for ordinary life. A boy climbs a tree. A little girl dies and her parents drive home without her body. A poet asks, 'if this life is a dream, why do I drink so much wine?' --Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light

Author Information

Matthew M. Cariello was born and raised in New Jersey. One morning in 1962 as he stood in the cement backyard in Union City, an airplane flew overhead and the drone of the plane's engine harmonized with some frequency deep in his brain. He attended Rutgers as an undergrad and the Master's program in creative writing at New York University, and earned a PhD in English Education from NYU in 1992. He was fortunate enough to work with dozens of remarkable poets and teachers during his years in New York and New Jersey, and made maybe five good friends. His first book of poems, A Boat That Can Carry Two/Una barca per due, won the 2010 Bordighera Poetry Prize and was published in a bilingual edition in 2011. He's had stories, haiku, poems and reviews published in Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo, Poet Lore, The Moth, Artful Dodge, The Evening Street Review, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Heron's Nest, The Long Story, Atlas Poetica, Under the Basho, The Indiana Review, Iron Horse Review, The Journal, and others. Currently, he's a senior lecturer in the English department at The Ohio State University in Columbus, where he teaches courses in literature and writing.

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