Tremulous Hinge (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781609384869)

Rain intermits, bus windows steam up, loved ones suffer from dementia--in the constantly shifting, metaphoric world of Tremulous Hinge, figures struggle to remain standing and speaking against forces of gravity, time, and language. In these visually porous poems, boundaries waver and reconfigure along the rumbling shoreline of Rockaway or during the intermediary hours that an insomniac undergoes between darkness and dawn. Through a series of self-portraits, elegies, and Eros-tinged meditations, this hovering never subsides but offers, among the fragments, momentary constellations: "moths all swarming the / same light bulb."

From the difficulties of stuttering to teetering attempts at love, from struggling to order a hamburger to tracing the deckled edge of a hydrangea, these poems tumble and hum, revealing a hinge between word and world. Ultimately, among lofting waves, collapsing hands, and darkening skies, words themselves--a stutterer's maneuvers through speech, a deceased grandfather's use of punctuation--become forms of consolation. From its initial turbulence to its final surprising solace, this debut collection mesmerizes.


Author: Adam Giannelli
ISBN-10: 1609384865
ISBN-13: 9781609384869
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Language: English
Published: 04/15/2017
Pages: 90
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 7.80h x 6.00w x 0.30d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/27/2017
Library Journal 05/01/2017 pg. 79