A01=Dante Di Stefano
Anne Carson
Anne Sexton
Author_Dante Di Stefano
Category=DC
elegy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
fatherhood
long poem
love song
Lucille Clifton
metapoetry
midlife
pandemic
poetic influences
poetry
social upheaval
unborn son
William Heyen
Product details
- ISBN 9780299341541
- Dimensions: 140 x 191mm
- Publication Date: 21 Mar 2023
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Appearing on the first page of Dante Di Stefano’s Midwhistle, a flock of blackbirds braids its way throughout this book-length poem—an elegy to life itself. A sprawling, digressive love note to an unborn son, it is also a celebration of the life and legacy of poet William Heyen, a meditation on midlife, and an exploration of the food and fuel of poetry itself.
Di Stefano travels through a controlled stream of consciousness as he examines the weights of joy and grief. Bearing witness to the world, Midwhistle unfolds and refolds upon itself, touching on Hiroshima, Bergen-Belsen, Charlottesville, the sacoglossan sea slug, Darwin's Arch, and much more. Stylistically formal, the poem soars and dips, lightly and deftly finding the light in nighttime meditations, as the poet considers “our Unyet son, lemon-sized, / amniotic cosmonaut,” while imagining Heyen at his own age, “the thin black necktie of your / apprenticeship had not been / taken off yet.”
In these examinations we find the poet himself, faced always with a “blinking / cursor,” seeking in the words and lives of other poets what it really means to write poetry. Midwhistle, in its meandering self-reflection and loving expansiveness, is a celebration of the act of poetic creation itself.
Remember, to be
human is to be broken
to be broken, is to
see the almond blossom burst
under the closed eyelids of
your beloved.
—Excerpt from “xxiii. (interlude: prayer for Gaza)”
Di Stefano travels through a controlled stream of consciousness as he examines the weights of joy and grief. Bearing witness to the world, Midwhistle unfolds and refolds upon itself, touching on Hiroshima, Bergen-Belsen, Charlottesville, the sacoglossan sea slug, Darwin's Arch, and much more. Stylistically formal, the poem soars and dips, lightly and deftly finding the light in nighttime meditations, as the poet considers “our Unyet son, lemon-sized, / amniotic cosmonaut,” while imagining Heyen at his own age, “the thin black necktie of your / apprenticeship had not been / taken off yet.”
In these examinations we find the poet himself, faced always with a “blinking / cursor,” seeking in the words and lives of other poets what it really means to write poetry. Midwhistle, in its meandering self-reflection and loving expansiveness, is a celebration of the act of poetic creation itself.
Remember, to be
human is to be broken
to be broken, is to
see the almond blossom burst
under the closed eyelids of
your beloved.
—Excerpt from “xxiii. (interlude: prayer for Gaza)”
Dante Di Stefano has published three previous poetry collections, including Ill Angels, and co-edited the anthology, Misrepresented People. A prize-winning author, he earned his PhD in English from Binghamton University and lives in Endwell, New York.
