Poems for Two Violins

By Joseph Roccasalvo

Poems for Two Violins by Joseph Roccasalvo exhibits a striking talent for the formal style in poetry. The collection is masterful for employing rhyme, meter, and the wordplay of puns and paradox. In the celebration of love in mysticism, romance, and abiding friendship, the poems are subtle and emotional, complex but always comprehensible. They are so overtly musical that the tag, poetically Bach, best describes them. They share that composer’s gift for point and counterpoint in their symmetry and precision of choice. The playful wit, conspicuous in the spiritual poems, would captivate even the most secular reader. Poems for Two Violins will inspire both poets and lovers who have a zest for rhyme and meter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796012057

Joseph Roccasalvo

A native New Yorker, Joseph Roccasalvo followed his graduate degrees in philosophy, English literature, and theology with a Harvard PhD in comparative religion and a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkok, and Chicago. For over ten years in New York City, he was a professor of religious studies at Fordham University´s Bronx and Lincoln Center campuses. He was also a visiting professor of Buddhism at Columbia University in New York City and Franklin University in Lugano, Switzerland. Now engaged in graduate school mentoring, he is also a fiction writer. He has published five novels: Fire in a Windless Place, Chartreuse, Portrait of a Woman, The Odor of Sanctity, and The Devil’s Interval. Two novellas, The Powers That Be and Beyond the Pale were printed as Double Entendre. There followed three books of short stories: Outward Signs, The Mansions of Limbo, and Triple Sec. Two solo performances, Waging Waugh and Gospel Limericks, appeared as Two for One and were followed by a memoir, As It Were. Two further novellas have been published: Island of the Assassin and Alina in Ecstasy. These novellas were followed by a book of poetry, Poems for Two Violins, and the collected short stories, Twists of Faith. He has guided students in journalism and international studies at The New School for Social Research and has contributed essays to the New School’s newspaper in his online column, A Word to the Wise.

Book preview

THREE POEMS FOR A VITA NUOVA

 The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice

I had passed by your face but once, yet who could guess

That with a momentary glance, it should so please

Your eyes to grant me visions in my wakefulness

When you walked by at your ease.

Now I am alone. I do not see the leaves rise

And go drifting amid the stir of vagrant wind.

I can but gaze upon your face with bewildered eyes—

And young love has a thousand.

 He Wonders at Her Beauty

When upon your face I held my gaze,

I could not keep myself from wondering

Where you had gone to spend your winter days

That you should be so lovely in the spring.

 He Grieves at Her Absence

Now you have gone to live beyond this place,

Where, among myriad faces, you are but a face,

And left my heart a sea that will not tire

Of all the ebb and flow of lost desire.

This pain may pass, yet I cannot forget

You in my wakefulness. And when I let

The vision of your constant face depart,

My mind’s soft hammer beat

Waits eager to repeat

The bloodless crucifixion of my heart.

AT LITANIES

We knelt together within the secluded church,

Each entertaining some private loveliness.

The clamorous bells impeded the rapid search

For one impeccable word and left him depressed.

But I, who muttered beside, could not foresee

Behind enfolded fingers and lidded eyes

His desolate mind sought vistas of fantasy

With never an afterthought at the compromise

Enacted between his praying and poetry.

But