To Hush All The Dead by William Allegrezza

The Poet, who traditionally has been seen as the guide of the community – the vates or prophet for the ancient Romans – is here a wandering soul trying to find the map of himself among fears, forests, frustration. He doesn’t pretend to know the truth or the meaning of life – “I speak memory and ash” – he is totally bare in front of us. Indeed the Poet is like us in his tormented quest shifting words through the cold prairie or from a cliff’s edge. In this dystopian world map in which we live, the Poet is walking, wandering, waiting. No Virgilio is there to help him find his way. He is alone, we are alone. We become weary while our words disintegrate. In this long quest we seem to have totally lost our tracks with our eyes burned by disillusionment and disappointment. But the Poet has got a map, brilliantly conceived, and – as the guide of the community – reminds us to head to our place of peace, which lies within reach if we shelter “once again with loved ones”.

—Serena Piccoli

A poet bountifully rooted in geography, Allegrezza transcends the usual sense of place. In To Hush All The Dead, he reveals that every one of us faces “The Natural Trail Marked,” simultaneously experiencing a lack of understanding and hard self-questioning, as a sense of direction seems “thrown to bits and folded in blue.”

Among the highlights of this volume is Allegrezza’s making new the haibun form. The American language slants each piece toward the declarative then veers toward the whisper of nature, as in “Wind sings through small holes” and “the tree stands mid-swamp / picturesque and unreachable.” There is a harmonic quality about the gentle narratives that lift off with the touch of each lingering image.

Everywhere in this important new volume is community, that of the poems themselves and of us as living beings. Allegrezza acknowledges the companionship of poems, referencing the “candy, stray wire, and time” that comprise a randomness demanding equal openness. Community is not the breezy, easeful mention of an unearned togetherness. We are all relegated to our commonality and survival, “Join or die.” Amid such urgencies, the poet presses on with intelligence and the courage to admit the words of the opening “Invocation”:

speak to
me now of
the
many ways
we can avoid
the
quick misstep
into the deep,
the
covering over
of these selves.

—Sheila E. Murphy

William Allegrezza edits the press Moria Books, Moss Trill, and teaches at Indiana University Northwest. He has published many poetry books, poetry reviews, articles, translations, short stories, and poems. More information can be found at https://www.allegrezza.info.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 90 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-428-4

$18

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