Elegy becomes explicit as the book progresses, met in the final sections by poems of relationship. Inside us.”-Lisa Russ Spaar, author, Orexia: Poems “In this stunning debut collection, the observations of an often-solitary speaker explode in dazzling metaphors, unexpected juxtapositions, and challenging insights. Answer: happily for us, both.”-Marianne Boruch, author, Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing “Rilke meets Roethke in the beveled moptops of a hydrangea, a basketball net’s ‘punctured sieve,’ a rogue porcupine (‘quilled, in dark makeup, like the bass player / in an 80s band’), all transformed, in Giannelli’s scrupulous, sonically lavish articulation, into emblems of the unspeakable mystery inside every syllable. ‘Am I lost / or have I been lifted?’ the poet asks. Though perfect expression may be unattainable, poetry is often about the process, and it is a pleasure to watch Giannelli work (and rework) his magic.”-starred review, Publishers Weekly “This extraordinary and sobering debut begins with a literal stutter-‘Since I couldn't say tomorrow / I said Wednesday.’ In trade for this impediment, Adam Giannelli finds that, in poetry, what can’t be said gives way to what must be said.”-Craig Morgan Teicher, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize “Adam Giannelli talks to the world-to rain, to insomnia, to the beloveds here and vanished, to the stars themselves in their ‘old staring contest.’ Sink into this book as into solace and trouble. He contends with the limits of clarity using some quite brilliant anagrams and homonyms, as in “parents in the train window winnowed to transparence.” Sometimes Giannelli seems to pull stunning phrases whole from the ether, describing the tides as “the ocean tearing blue page after/ blue page from its journal.” He also explores grief through a document written by a deceased grandfather, its perplexities perhaps easier to contend with than those of life itself.
Metaphors are applied and swapped out, as in “Hydrangea,” where the flower is a snow cone, a “Bearded lady,// balloon man, chameleon,” “honeycomb/ and bouquet,” “viscous muscle,” and more. In “Star Gazers,” “we” look out at the stars, but they are looking right back at us. This striving for fluency could have been born from the childhood speech impediment the poet reflects on poignantly in the opening poem: “since I can’t say everlasting/ I say every/ lost thing.” At the same time, Giannelli is preoccupied with double meanings. “Giannelli’s debut is a quiet affair, but its simplicity masks layers and a longing for precision exhibited through minute adjustments, tweaked phrases, and shifting imagery. From its initial turbulence to its final surprising solace, this debut collection mesmerizes. Ultimately, among lofting waves, collapsing hands, and darkening skies, words themselves-a stutterer's maneuvers through speech, a deceased grandfather’s use of punctuation-become forms of consolation.
#Tremulous in a sentence series#
Through a series of self-portraits, elegies, and Eros-tinged meditations, this hovering never subsides but offers, among the fragments, momentary constellations: “moths all swarming the / same light bulb.”įrom the difficulties of stuttering to teetering attempts at love, from struggling to order a hamburger to tracing the deckled edge of a hydrangea, these poems tumble and hum, revealing a hinge between word and world. In these visually porous poems, boundaries waver and reconfigure along the rumbling shoreline of Rockaway or during the intermediary hours that an insomniac undergoes between darkness and dawn.
#Tremulous in a sentence windows#
Rain intermits, bus windows steam up, loved ones suffer from dementia-in the constantly shifting, metaphoric world of Tremulous Hinge, figures struggle to remain standing and speaking against forces of gravity, time, and language.
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