Synopses & Reviews
Review
“At times keenly empathetic (‘Ode to Billy Dove’), and often irreverent (‘Funding the Dead’), Citino’s intense observations and wit yield irresistible poems.” —ForeWord
Review
“This is a surprising book, given as it is to its tonally bright, aghast/funny treatment of 'the news,' wittily daring to close that oft-quoted schism between news and poetry in its short-sentenced, flabbergasted, tight-stanza'd mode of attack-beyond the spirit of play at work, it also has the capacity to be heartbreaking.” —Poetry International
Review
“Citino presents a fun and insightful take on whatever curious moments inspire him from the world at large. He does this marveloulsy, walking a tight line between fact and fancy. It stands out among the recent poetry books as something new and interesting, and as proof that poetry can come from anywhere.” —The Adirondack Review
Synopsis
In The News and Other Poems, David Citino confronts and attempts to make sense of the news. He explores the good and bad ways the world has of careening into a life and sending it off course. Citino tries to understand how we come to know what we know, driven as we are by haughty assumptions about the world we’re making and the control we think we exert over our own lives and loves. While still holding romantic notions of ivory towers and ivy-covered garrets, Citino welcomes the latest information—no matter how bad the news. He struggles to understand stories from sources impeachable and unimpeachable—supermarket tabloids and journals of science, folklore and the laboratory, chronicles of ancient history and news wires, even those sometimes terrible things we learn from our doctors or those we love.“This is high entertainment by a poet who possesses honesty and playfulness in equal measure and who is an expert at deploying the line and boxing the stanza.” —Billy Collins “Pound said that literature is news that stays news and the distinguished poet, David Citino, has taken this observation from the wittiest reinvention of current events all the way to the Great Tabloid of the inexpressible. The News and Other Poems is funny, remarkable, and profound.” —Carol Muske-Dukes “The strength of this book resides in its vivid mixture of the sacred and the profane. The real ‘news’ of these poems is that here is a person alert to all our profane and post-modern predicaments, and yet who still finds within himself the stirrings and yearnings toward whatever we can dimly perceive of the sacred.” —Fred Marchant “These vivid topical poems try wryly to come to terms with human depravity, with ‘the grim, thorny symmetry/ of war,’ ‘the usual apocalypse’ of people drowned or killed in meaningless accidents. But this is not a dark book. Citino's wit and passionate love of life sparkle throughout. Speaking through Sister Mary Appassionata, he declares, ‘there is a place where it all makes sense.’” —Maxine Kumin
About the Author
DAVID CITINO is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Notable Book, Broken Symmetry. He is the contributing editor of The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and Threepenny Review. Citino is professor of English and creative writing and Poet Laureate at Ohio State University.
Table of Contents
Pt. 1. Diggers unearth Tut's nurse -- Neanderthal, with help from cave and bear, invents the flute -- Diggers unearth Tut's nurse -- Unknown soldier buried at Gettysburg -- Ode to Billie Dove -- Winnie Ruth Judd, trunk murderess -- The politics of biogeography; or, Gerry Adams visits No. 10 Downing Street -- Four drown in pool -- Newborn found alive in shallow grave -- Models auction their eggs on the web -- 88-year-old man visits the candy shop -- A gunman destroys the world again -- 25 hurt in tent collapse -- Pt. 2. Pompeii in danger -- "I see a dark stranger in your future" -- Pompeii in danger -- The road beneath the road -- The farm beneath the farm -- Parish priest struck by Easter bell -- Venice declares war on pigeons -- Funding the dead -- Writing to the holy child of Aracoeli -- The land of liars -- Il giorno to close -- Doctors in Italy transplant heart of baby born without a brain -- Nonna, who, the last 50 years, burned a candle every day -- Virgin cries tears of olive oil -- The death of Domenico Modugno -- Pt. 3. The penmanship of the dead -- Thoreau's site fouled by nature -- Making time -- The death of a friend who still believes -- The desertion of the frogs -- Tools -- Payday -- Naming a wildflower, a mountain, a night -- Nomen est omen: a name is destiny -- Hound dog -- Spiders, worms, the history of ms -- Two lessons from the sky -- Reading the MRI report, the retired pastor considers dementia -- Tabloid poem -- The thawing of the iceman -- A brief history of fathers -- Calling mother -- Song of the bone -- The penmanship of the dead -- Sister Mary Appassionata on the grand unified theory -- Cell phone.