The Habit of Spring: Collected Poems 2019

By Carmine Giordano

The Habit of Spring is a collection of poems that celebrates our amazement and resilience as human beings as we become aware of our place in the universe and understand that after thirteen billion years of cataclysm and chaos, nature has evolved in us the capacity to be aware of itself, to know that it knows, to see that it sees.

Self-awareness brings with it a relentless drive to delve deep into the heart of the matter to find the what, where, when, how, and why of our existence and then try to find the most exact and adequate way to express and communicate our discoveries.

The poems in this collection try to tell how it feels when the sky falls in on us on a night full of stars, how we want at times to coalesce with other beings, how to return to the original singularity of creation, how we struggle to assert our will against the genetic algorithms that determine our relations, how we try to end the cold of our isolated existence by inventing divine beings who love us, or how we grieve when we realize our finality in the dying of garden flowers.

Mostly, the poems keep taking us back to hope, urging us to align ourselves repeatedly with the thrust of the first moment, heed the sweet discomfort come back in the blood, the habit of spring, the possibility that returns again and again—and again!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796041521

Carmine Giordano

Carmine Giordano was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has an MA in English Literature from New York University and was a recipient of a Fulbright Award for Study in Italy. He is a retired teacher and assistant principal from the New York City Board of Education. He is also a nationally certified psychoanalyst and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). He is an assistant editor of the online poetry magazine Abalone Moon and the author of six poetry collections: The Courage of Flowers, The Hero’s Journey, Still Sing, The Habit of Spring, Collected Poems 2020, and Saving Daylight. His poetry has appeared in The South Hampton Review, The River Poets Journal, Abalone Moon, Poets of the Palm Beaches Anthology, Perspectives, and Belletrist. Mr. Giordano has spent most of his life teaching writing and literature in New York, Georgia and Florida where he is an adjunct lecturer at Palm Beach State College and lives in happy retirement with his wife Ronnie.

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Copyright © 2019 by Carmine Giordano.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019908072

ISBN:                  Hardcover                       978-1-7960-4154-5

                            Softcover                          978-1-7960-4153-8

                            eBook                               978-1-7960-4152-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/18/2019

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CONTENTS

1.     What Is True About Us

2.     After

3.     The Eye of the Beholder

4.     Bog

5.     Artifact

6.     Swan Song

7.     Onomastics

8.     Nada

9.     Away in A Manger

10.   Present Absence

11.   What God and Man Is

12.   Modern Art

13.   What It Takes

14.   Of Bread and Milk and Roses

15.   A Bintel Brief

16.   Eucharist

17.   The Meteor’s Tail

18.   Ars Poetica

19.   E = Mc Squared

20.   Downscale

21.   Deep Sea Diving: an Aesthetic Pursuit

22.   Ode To Joy

23.   Of Monument and Importance

24.   The Suicide

25.   At Random

26.   The Need for Light

27.   Pain Tressé

28.   The Funeral Package

29.   Reductio Ad Absurdum

30.   Before Torah

31.   This Old House

32.   Past Pain

33.   Mixed Metaphors in A Time of War

34.   Divine Office

35.   Fruit Fly

36.   Washed Eyes

37.   Shekinah

38.   In the Way of A Poem

39.   Whirling the Dervish

40.   Poem Debris

41.   Portrait in A Garden

42.   Mistaken Identity

43.   Picture at an Exhibition

44.   Artist’s Sketch

45.   Twilight of the Gods

46.   At the Tomb of Cangrande

47.   They That Are Within the Flesh

48.   Ending Summer

49.   Last Leaving

50.   The Reading

51.   The Gift of Screws

52.   Season’s Finale

53.   Song at Twilight

54.   The Lady in the Harbor

55.   Beef

56.   At Zero

57.   Of Porcelain Or Glass

58.   Orphans in the Snow

59.   Halloween

60.   Animal Vegetable Mineral

61.   Entropy

62.   Old Dog

63.   That Which Moves

64.   Rubaiyat

65.   Tree of Life

66.   Antiques Roadshow

67.   Extreme Unction

68.   Helpmate

69.   Ozymandias

70.   Dervish

71.   Poem

72.   Aubade

73.   Notice

74.   Poiesis

75.   The Vending Machine

76.   Winter Scene

77.   Thanksgiving

78.   The Noise in My Head

79.   A Taste of Honey

80.   Playing By the Rules

81.   Advice for the Lovelorn

82.   Body

83.   From the Milky Way

84.   Silent Night, Holy Night

85.   The Sorrows of Werther

86.   Comic Relief

87.   Eating Sausages: A Sonnet of Sorts

88.   Right Now

89.   Dog

90.   Scream

91.   Cosmos

92.   Emily at One Hundred Eighty-Eight

93.   What Have You

94.   O Come All Ye Faithful

95.   Big Bang

96.   The Metaphysics of Flight

97.   Icarus

98.   Deaf Dumb and Blind

99.   Benediction

100.  Zero

101.  What Is Left

102.  The Sound and the Fury

103.  The Cosmic Relay

104.  Rose

105.  Psalm

106.  The Way It Is

107.  Luncheon Meats

108.  Poet

109.  Wholly Eucharist

110.  The Sixth Day

111.  Hot Dog

112.  Of Poetry

113.  Jacob’s Ladder

114.  Reflections

115.  Here

116.  Blood Moon

117.  Artisan

118.  There

119.  Opossum

120.  Banana Republic

121.  Passages

122.  Crow

123.  At the Cave of the Sybil

124.  What It Is

125.  Being There

126.  Road Kill

127.  On the Mountain

128.  Una Faccia Una Razza

129.  Chagallesque

130.  Neverland

131.  Sacerdos

132.  Green Cay

133.  Birth Day

134.  The Habit of Spring

135.  Before the Body

136.  Gardening in Eden

137.  Latin Hits

138.  Translation

139.  Sonata

140.  Flower

141.  Raw

142.  The Cost of Saving Daylight

143.  Auto Shop

144.  After the Fall

145.  The Fact of the Matter

146.  At the Edge

147.  Being and Non-Being

148.  On the Road

149.  Wrestling Matches

150.  Reverie

151.  Upstage

152.  Dirty Rotten Spoilers

153.  The Order of Things

154.  Blueprint

155.  In the Yard

156.  Revising Shakespeare

157.  Vigil

158.  And There’s Always Something

159.  Reversing Darwin

160.  The Truth, the Whole Truth

161.  You, Exactly

162.  Hole

163.  Redeeming Bones

164.  Baptism of Water

165.  The Rites of Spring

166.  Talking Turkey

167.  This and Heaven Too

168.  To A Flower

169.  On Being Somewhere Else

170.  When Pontius Pilate Asks You for the Truth

171.  Science 101

172.  Marching Instructions

173.  The Heart of the Matter

174.  Submissions

175.  Incommunicado

176.  Cosmic Views

177.  On Parnassus

178.  Storming the Winter Palace

179.  Embryo

180.  Self-Employed

181.  The Look

182.  Vitruvian Man

183.  Antonio, My Father

for Ronnie

whose joy and love

renews and restores

in all seasons

Fore Words

The Habit of Spring is a collection of poems that celebrates our amazement and resilience as human beings as we become aware of our place in the universe and understand that after thirteen billion years of cataclysm and chaos, nature has evolved in us the capacity to be aware of itself, to know that