Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Midwhistle

Midwhistle

Di Stefano, Dante

Paperback

Series: Wisconsin Poetry

General Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0299341542
ISBN13: 9780299341541
Publisher: Univ Of Wisconsin Pr
Published: Mar 21 2023
Pages: 116
Weight: 0.30
Height: 0.39 Width: 5.43 Depth: 7.32
Language: English
Appearing on the first page of Dante Di Stefano's Midwhistle, a flock of blackbirds braids its way throughout this book-length poem--an elegy to life itself. A sprawling, digressive love note to an unborn son, it is also a celebration of the life and legacy of poet William Heyen, a meditation on midlife, and an exploration of the food and fuel of poetry itself.

Di Stefano travels through a controlled stream of consciousness as he examines the weights of joy and grief. Bearing witness to the world, Midwhistle unfolds and refolds upon itself, touching on Hiroshima, Bergen-Belsen, Charlottesville, the sacoglossan sea slug, Darwin's Arch, and much more. Stylistically formal, the poem soars and dips, lightly and deftly finding the light in nighttime meditations, as the poet considers our Unyet son, lemon-sized, / amniotic cosmonaut, while imagining Heyen at his own age, the thin black necktie of your / apprenticeship had not been / taken off yet.

In these examinations we find the poet himself, faced always with a blinking / cursor, seeking in the words and lives of other poets what it really means to write poetry. Midwhistle, in its meandering self-reflection and loving expansiveness, is a celebration of the act of poetic creation itself.

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