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9781963115710

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Embark on a flavorful journey through Italy with John J. Trause's delectable poetry collection, The Box of Torrone. Each poem is a mouthwatering morsel, skillfully capturing the essence of its represented city with unpredictability and flair; it succeeds in reaching the delicate balance of flavors like in artisanal nougat. With every turn of the page, I was treated to a literary feast that left a lingering sweetness, inviting me to savor the essence of my beloved Italy in every unforgettable poem. -Luca Manna, Executive Director of PALS Plus library consortium and International President of Lu Vucenanzo Library in Cardile, Italy John Trause's latest collection, Box of Torrone, opens with the poem ""In the Box,"" the empirical item he lauds and resents. For the uninitiated, the contents of that box promise the unexpected: ""Torrone is good enough, better even, to win sexual favors ..."" This collection is a romp inside, outside the box of torrone, nougat candy every Italian American kid grows up with: its aroma, its vanilla, its texture of chewy and crunch, its sweetness that causes teeth to chatter and crumble and the host-like wafer that covers top and bottom is swoon-worthy. Torrone is Trause's platform way to fantasies, ethics, wisdom, faith, limoncello and the author's passion to create poetry that dances and leaps over the plain pages revealing his unmitigated joy of language many writers would like to harness. -Maria Lisella, Queens Poet Laureate of Queens and Academy of American Poets Fellow Remembering with great nostalgia the days spent in the country I was born, Italy, during the days in December leading to Christmas Day. Walking during the night through the narrow street of my town, Mola di Bari and breathing in, the surrounding aromas of freshly made torrone made on the spot by the numerous outdoors improvised shops. Memories I will take with me to the last days of my life. This book is a great way of stirring up old memories and creating new experiences.-Giovanni Simone, director of Verismo Opera

Patrick Barron's incredible Bosk conveys the arbor-ardors of speech among species. It moves inside the names we give to nature, pulling word and branch apart for careful inspection, and drawing out the secret language that connects tree to tree, and we. This is a book that reminds us we are all enmeshed in a ""vagrant vacuous whole"" across ""fields of ever increasing paratactic parallax."" -Rebecca Kosick Each of these small poems unfolds like a Mallarmé fan-poem from within the initials of the Latin name of a bush or tree. While their exact origins are concealed until the endnotes, each dispatch from the arboretum is imbued with the spirit of its source-tree. ""Knobby articulations"" unfurl themselves like buds from between the prickles of crateagus crus-galli, the cockspur hawthorn. There are flutters of playful intimacy in those poems that directly address their cryptically-named trees, even stronger where ""scattershot rustlings"" speak back from the plant itself, as tree and human find shared voiced in ""this brilliant/ sputtering state of being."" -Ellen Dillon Patrick Barron's incredible Bosk conveys the arbor-ardors of speech among species. It moves inside the names we give to nature, pulling word and branch apart for careful inspection, and drawing out the secret language that connects tree to tree, and we. This is a book that reminds us we are all enmeshed in a ""vagrant vacuous whole"" across ""fields of ever increasing paratactic parallax."" -Rebecca Kosick Each of these small poems unfolds like a Mallarmé fan-poem from within the initials of the Latin name of a bush or tree. While their exact origins are concealed until the endnotes, each dispatch from the arboretum is imbued with the spirit of its source-tree. ""Knobby articulations"" unfurl themselves like buds from between the prickles of crateagus crus-galli, the cockspur hawthorn. There are flutters of playful intimacy in those poems that directly address their cryptically-named trees, even stronger where ""scattershot rustlings"" speak back from the plant itself, as tree and human find shared voiced in ""this brilliant/ sputtering state of being."" -Ellen Dillon

Author Information

Writer and translator Patrick Barron grew up in the Pacific Northwest, moving from Great Falls, Montana to Anchorage, Alaska, and then Eugene, Oregon. He spent significant years in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ferrara, Italy, and San Francisco, and holds degrees in English and Cultural Geography. He now lives in Boston where he teaches at the University of Massachusetts. His books include Spooring (poetry); Selected Essays and Dialogues: Adventures into the Errant Familiar, by Gianni Celati; Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale; Haiku for a Season, Haiku per una stagione, by Andrea Zanzotto; The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto; and Italian Environmental Literature: An Anthology. His work has received a number of recognitions, including the Rome Prize; the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship; the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award; and a Fulbright Scholarship.

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