Poetry Rules

As this year draws to its end, I look back at this year's achievements and I cannot but be grateful. The year started with the publication of my second American chapbook, Diagnosis , by Kristy Bowen and her magical dancing girl press . This spring my translations of Alejandro Murguia's poems,   Offerte di Carta (Paper Offerings) was published by Gilgamesh Edizioni. Another book in translation I am very proud of  Nuova Antologia di Poesia Americana (New Anthology of American Poetry), was published by Edizioni Ensemble. My poems "Crave What Matters" and "Lullaby (for Philip Levine)" have been published in the Anthology Ovethrowing Capitalism Vol. 2 edited by Jack Hirschman and John Curl. I wish to thank all the Editors who have accepted my poems for publication in their journals: Thank you to Kelly Boyker Guillemette for having accepted for publication four of my poems in the Spring issue of the amazing  Menacing Hedge .  Two of the poems, "Unfa...

I am so pleased that my new chapbook, Diagnosis , is now available from  {dancing girl press & studio} . I am indeed happy and grateful that Kristy Bowen chose it in the first place. I know a few of my friends have already ordered a copy and I hope more will. Let me tell you something about how the poems of this chapbook came to me. The original poem, which is also the one that gives the name to the chapbook, revolves around the idea that being "diagnosed" with poetry can be a lacerating experience. Writing about the hare in this poem made the whole difference. Indeed, when picking up my collection of poems by Sylvia Plath just a few days later and leafing through its pages, I ended up reading her poem "Totem." It was then that I found the path I was looking for. The following lines struck a chord deep within me: "In the bowl the hare is aborted, Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice, Flayed of fur and humanity, Let us eat it like Pl...