Collected Poems 2020

By Carmine Giordano

The poems in this volume are the author's attempts to put into words some of the inner particulars of his eighty-year journey on the planet and to share the amazing discoveries, realizations and frustrations he has experienced trying to make verbal translations of that adventure.

Many of the poems acknowledge the inadequacy of our alphabet sounds and words to adequately represent our emotions, ideas and sensory experiences. Words are stand-ins, written or spoken sound symbols, maps for our inner territories, and not the territories themselves. The poem “Onomatopoesis” asserts that “the vowels howl out” and “the consonants deter deflect conflict” but do not actually share what we have experienced. Another, “Piecemeal,” states that “what you’re looking for is always hiding in the spaces between the words.”

The author hopes readers will use their own intuitive experiences to find whatever of him is hiding between his words and be left with some wonder and appreciation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796098983

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 © 2020 by Carmine Giordano.

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: 04/22/2020

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CONTENTS

1.   And

2.   What You Want

3.   What Remains of the Day

4.   The Bear on the Ice Shelf

5.   On Poetry

6.   Plato’s Cave

7.   Beautiful for Spacious Skies for Oscar and Valeria

8.   Poetry

9.   Canyon Resurrection

10.   Awaiting Easter

11.   What’s Doing

12.   Breukelen

13.   Them Apples

14.   The Cabinet of Curiosities

15.   Beast

16.   Question

17.   Posing for the Fire

18.   Anniversary

19.   Wife

20.   Me, in Memoriam

21.   Woman

22.   Pileup

23.   Just Like That

24.   Photo Album

25.   All Ye Who Labor

26.   Refrigerator Magnet

27.   Passing

28.   Interior Decorating

29.   Autopsy

30.   Leaf Peeping

31.   The Cost of Things

32.   Onomatopoesis

33.   Dental Floss

34.   Place the Blame On

35.   Aubade

36.   Hermit

37.   Onan

38.   Honor Thy Father

39.   Subway

40.   Modern Poetry

41.   Freedom

42.   Damage

43.   La Madonna del Carmine

44.   If a Tree in the Forest

45.   Cinematography

46.   Canterbury Tale

47.   Solstice

48.   Maybe

49.   Candle

50.   Kitchen Gallery

51.   Massacre

52.   Femoir

53.   At the Next Table

54.   Philadelphia: Visiting the Museum of the American Revolution

55.   Body and Soul: a Dialogue

56.   The Point

57.   Dry Spell

58.   Where You Find It

59.   Make My Day

60.   Comparison Shopping

61.   Finding the Words

62.   Priest

63.   Faked

64.   Stardust

65.   Inside Out

66.   Moving Day

67.   Marks of Cain

68.   Outage

69.   Ur-Place

70.   Matrimony

71.   Vocation

72.   Becoming the Buddha

73.   Finale

74.   End

75.   Now

76.   Crackers

77.   Piecemeal

78.   The Way It Is

79.   Climate Change

80.   Bad News

81.   Why

82.   Searching for Parts

83.   The Good Old

84.   Beasts of Burden

85.   Holy Card

86.   The Pyroclastic Flow

87.   Flasher

88.   The First Day

89.   Tikkun Olam

90.   Going On

91.   Poeisis

92.   Snowbird

93.   Testing: One Two Three

94.   No-See-Ums

95.   Closings

96.   Serengeti

97.   Providence

98.   Semblable

99.   Sincerely Yours

100.   All About It

101.   The Impossibility of Poetry

102.   SOS

103.   Passage

104.   Enough

105.   A Pocket Full of Posies

106.   A Taste of Honey

107.   The Idea of It

108.   Before the Frost

109.   After Degas

110.   No One Important

111.   Ant

112.   This Side

113.   Presence

114.   Water Bug

115.   Martyrology

116.   ‘A Pizza Napolitana

117.   Retirement Community

118.   Intermezzo

119.   Riding the Palazzo Chiara

120.   Periscope

121.   Metempsychosis

122.   Veni Creator Spiritus

123.   Holiday

124.   Now and at the Hour

125.   Beatitudes

126.   Losing It

127.   Summation

128.   Promenade

129.   Airy Nothing

130.   Christmas Memory

131.   Stanzas Towards a New Year 1

132.   Stanzas Towards a New Year 2

133.   Ding an Sich

134.   Anti-Christ

135.   A Life in Translation

136.   Howdy-do

137.   Abelard

138.   Memories of Catholic School

139.   Landscape

140.   The Whole Truth

141.   Zipidee Doo Dah

142.   In Murphy’s Tavern

143.   Drill

144.   Snake Poison

145.   So

146.   Rites of Passage

147.   A Canticle for Phil

148.   After

149.   Battening the Hatches

150.   Me

151.   Soliloquy

152.   Valentine

153.   Cupboard

154.   Birth Day

155.   Still

156.   Against No

157.   Dancing Squarely

158.   Garden

159.   Me in Memoriam

160.   Here

161.   Moving Day

162.   There

163.   Rose Bouquet

164.   Virus

165.   Letters

166.   Anyway

167.   Saving Daylight

168.   Budget

169.   Question

170.   Bananas

171.   Green Card

172.   Centrifuge

173.   Poem

174.   Morning Song

175.   Bottom Line

176.   Victory Garden

177.   Neanderthal

178.   Fortress

179.   Aliyah

180.   Redemption

181.   COVID 19: Holocaust

182.   Sabbath

183.   After Keats

184.   In the Yard

185.   On Leaving the Ark

186.   Mass in Time of War

187.   Joke

188.   Flowerpot

189.   Garden

190.   Adam

191.   After Hamlet

192.   Palm Sunday

193.   Vigil

194.   Ode

195.   Open Sleigh

196.   Pesach

197.   The Point of It

198.   Pasqua

199.   Of the Fittest

200.   Not Today

201.   Magdalene

202.   Song

203.   Anthem for Easter Morning

204.   Turning Eighty

205.   Mocking Bird

206.   Genesis

207.   Caring for Flowers

208.   Of the Flower

209.   As Is

210.   Anthem

211.   In Passing

212.   Promethean Fire

for Ronnie

There would be

no way to say

who I am

or what the point

of anything —

moon star sun

lavender rose

pearl sapphire

daily bread

necessary water —

breath even —

would be

without you

my dear

my rarest

darling!

Fore Words

The inscription on Keats’ tombstone in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery reads Here lies one whose name was writ in water. The epitaph was inserted reputedly as the poet’s anguished reflection that he was going to his impending death without having developed the full potential of his talents. As such, his words express the sadness that many writers experience at