Fugue for Other Hands

Eloquent, haunting, and dangerously attuned to both the beauty and the suffering of almost everything alive, the poems in Joseph Fasano's exquisite Fugue for Other Hands suggest the poetry Young Werther might have written if Goethe had transported him into 21st-century American adulthood instead of burying him under a linden tree in fictional Wahlheim. And yet there s no mistaking these poems so distinctive in their conception, and so bold in their execution for anyone else's. I can think of very few recent books of poetry that manage to create such a vivid, wild, psychologically resonant and quite possibly unforgettable atmosphere as that of Fasano's perpetual autumn--Timothy Donnelly Somewhat indescribable, as original things often are, the poems of Joseph Fasano feel hunted, gathered, built like fires, brewed like storms. Elemental and feral, Fugue for Other Hands is full of disturbing deeds and haunted rituals. At once mythic and specific, these poems are blood-stained, grief-scarred, providing their solace only from their commitment to art's depths. "Say you were the wild gift," one poem states; Fasano has such a gift, and therefore with his bare hands and torn heart makes poems worth living in. --Jeanne Marie Beaumont   Joseph Fasano is a writer and educator. He studied mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard University before changing his course of study and earning a degree in philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of language after Wittgenstein. He did his graduate study in poetry at Columbia University, working with Mark Strand, Lucie Brock-Broido, Richard Howard, and others. Beyond his Professorships, Fasano is passionate about developing inclusive learning communities outside the walls of academic institutions. As an educator, his mission is to help each student synthesize diverse fields of study to develop a unique and informed voice, a depth of attention, and a capacity to break free of reductive mindsets. His "Poetry Prompts," originally designed to help children create, have spread around the world, helping millions of people of all ages find their voices through the craft and magic of poetry. Fasano is the author of two novels: The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry are The Last Song of the World (forthcoming from BOA Editions, 2024); The Crossing (Cider Press Review, 2018), praised by Ilya Kaminsky for its 'lush drive to live, even in the darkest moments'; Vincent (Cider Press Review, 2015), which Rain Taxi Review hailed as a 'major literary achievement'; Inheritance (Cider Press Review, 2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; Fugue for Other Hands (2013) , which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, 'awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award.' A winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books, and he is the Founder of the Poem for You Series. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Boston Review, American Poets, Measure, Tin House, American Poetry Journal, The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, Verse Daily, the PEN Poetry Series, the Academy of American Poets' poem-a-day program, and other publications. It has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages, including Spanish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian.   "Eloquent, haunting, and dangerously attuned to both the beauty and the suffering of almost everything alive, the poems in Joseph Fasano's exquisite Fugue for Other Hands suggest the poetry Young Werther might have written if Goethe had transported him into 21st-century American adulthood instead of burying him under a linden tree in fictional Wahlheim. And yet there's no mistaking these poems so distinctive in their conception, and so bold in their execution for anyone else's. I can think of very few recent books of poetry that manage to create such a vivid, wild, psychologically resonant and quite possibly unforgettable atmosphere as that of Fasano's perpetual autumn, where a 'Teutonic man- / child' has 'cuffed himself fast // to a balsam,' where the wind is like 'a scribe / in his blindness, pacing the stones of his chamber,' and where October itself stands 'hunched like a colt / in a suit of black leaves.' Audacious, moody, surreal but never silly, wise but never pithy or pontificating, Fugue for Other Hands is like a skull-sized mushroom that appears in the forest after a rainstorm it is a logical product of the forest, and of the storm, and of time itself, but we still gasp when we behold it, and we are humbled to have it entrusted to us." - Timothy Donnelly "I have seen these poems coming for some time, but it is only now, when they are ample within my grasp, dark to my eyes and dolorous to my hearing feast and leave not plenty is the poet's desperate gospel that I have learned their active nature, how they attend in the reading: it is country-living and country-perishing that is consecrated here, where Joe Fasano traverses each threshold 'the way a child touches everything, with the hand of his murderer.' These hinterland poems are singularly lovely, but it is in their multifold gathering that they score, that they gain their ultimate musical identity, 'a symphony of release' the poet calls it, like Wagner and Mahler, preternaturally rich." - Richard Howard