Bøker av Gerry LaFemina

The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon-part one thing, part another and at their best, they're magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures collects the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows. Some of these poems have been previously published, and some are brand spanking new.

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the English into Italian by Elisa Biagini. Winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize. What draws me to Gerry LaFemina's poems is how much of the world they contain: Brooklyn streets, race-tracks, Vietnam, a boy's imagined transgressions, family dramas. What is compelling is the tension between the speaker's urge to understand and the mystery that resists explanation--the partial understandings, the misunderstandings of childhood.... Public and private collide, intersect, as events and images become more difficult to reconcile, to describe. LaFemina's poems ripple with erotic desire, the budding sexuality of young boys, the lure of the nape hidden under a woman's hair, the interiority of the boy who'd slid into the sleeve of the dark suit left by his father. It's a rich world...a gritty and tender gamble--Donna Masini.

Features re-readings and reviews of such late 20th Century poets as Anne Sexton, Larry Levis, Charles Wright, Patricia Goedicke, and Wendell Berry, as well as provides commentaries on poetic craft, the prose poem, and what it means to be a poet. LaFemina is a shrewd critic, and these essays will make us become inquisitive and curious.