Calendarium & Other Poems

Calendariums poems revel in juxtaposing seasonal images that are at once accessible and transformational. What may appear on first glance as traditional images of the seasons take us, on careful reading, to a deeper apprehension of time itself and its impermanence. New Years resolutions of January; Februarys groundhog; the lions and lambs of March; pretty maids of April, May, and June; Septembers school bus; pumpkins; scarecrows; and old Saint Nick himself lead us on a merry chase through a calendar that becomes much more than a scaffolding of days and weeks and months. In these short poems, time becomes animated by sly jokes, unexpected twists and turns of irony, and echoes of the great masters whom Dorazio admires. One can hear Emily Dickinsons slant truths, Wallace Stevenss blur of imagery, and Kay Ryans compression.

Finally, the poems of the second half of the book show no letup of intensity, mystery, and antic joy. They are crammed with synesthesia and contradiction in which every bright image has its reflection and its shadow. Theres an empty Quaker chair where ghosts await the second coming, the mystery of a whisper in a long-dead fathers brain, and God himself bungling creation in a confusion of man and housefly. These are truly extraordinary poems that take us to extraordinary places, igniting the imagination along the way

Bill Van Buskirk, poet and author of This Wild Joy That Thrills Outside the Law.