“This new poetry, taking such care of tem-perature—the time & details of the world—meaning the space(s) in which we live—defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. What I call MR/everydayMagicalRealism. A way of writing about hope.”
—Kamau Brathwaite, author of The Lazarus Poems
Now It’s Dark
by Peter Gizzi
“Gizzi is not a sentimental poet—not even close…His best poems exist on a different plane, as if he has achieved and is writing from a transcendent vantage most of us only strive for…He identifies the thing we’re all searching for in voices, in poems, in language, in songs; why we read and why we listen.” —Amanda Petrsich, The New Yorker
“There’s no ego in this writer’s work. It’s one of the purest examples of truth told from an inside source, beautifully patterned on the page…There’s no training ground for such writing. Every page, every poem, is challenged with unpredictability and intensity.” —Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
Peter Gizzi has written a brilliant follow-up to his National Book Award finalist Archeophonics. The poems in this new collection are concerned with grieving, with poetry and death, with beauty and sadness, with light. There is a necessary darkness that shines throughout. As Ben Lerner has written, “Gizzi’s poetry is an example of how a poet’s total tonal attention can disclose new orders of sensation and meaning. His beautiful lines are full of deft archival allusion.” With litany, elegy, and prose, Gizzi continues his pursuit toward a lyric of reality. Saturated with luminous detail, these original poems possess, even in their sorrowing moments, a dizzying freedom. Objects, images, and their histories are caught here in their half-life, their profoundly human afterlife.
PETER GIZZI is the author of eight collections of poetry including Archeophonics, Threshold Songs, and In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011. He has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios, and artist books. He lives in Holyoke, MA.
