Sunday, March 30, 2014

P.J. Gallo


Let's look at P.J. Gallo, specifically his chapbook Geirfuglasker. I especially love the middle of his poems, they're incredible.

He's got imagery that the Imagists would approve, and it's perfectly evocative, like in his "Étude Geirfuglasker" here, which I will excerpt from. For a second I thought I was back on the sea.

...             |     In a bright
valley, we are lost at sea,


lost in a simple blue fog   |
[...]

a dark speck for a boat.    Though
a simple blue fog settles
down into the sea's many


valleys.     The lost at sea find
land by sailing until they
find land.      The lost at sea's


bluish hull, nucleus of
a watery wreath



His poem "Monk Parakeets in Several Trees Outside a City of Millions" has a similarly amazing middle, one that made me consider booking a plane ticket after. The excellent combination of all the disparate elements is perfect. There's such a sense of place, of atmosphere. You also almost get the feeling of just driving through this place, this too wild piece of nature. The excerpt reads:

  ....  summoned after a
history of hungry nights    |


Just then, a monkbird dips her
beak against a leaf, sipping
         sidelong away from thirst    |
Florida's littoral limit,
Florida's beautiful limit
becomes the limit of my
curiosity's weaving [...]

the rear seat of the realist's   |
My glance across wet velvet
water ends against a buoy

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