"I never knew ecstasy could arrive at so many angles.'

This line perfectly encompassed my feelings as I fell through the words of Adam Giannelli, the winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, in his new volume, Tremulous Hinge. I feel so many times as though I turned translucent and the words flowed through me naming me a million times. The author clearly bears a love for all English language and very much loves baring the sins and glories of such in every way that he can.

The images evoked by the words of his lines are enough to make one feel as thought they've, again, come to the time of their life where you are falling in to love, falling out of love, experiencing loneliness, death, the struggle to define what identity is and the path of how to find it, before, during, and after one does. This is gorgeous and it we find ourselves in the world and brings as, it's said best in Sealevell;

"Say it in one breath; home"


Thank you to Netgalley and University of Iowa Press for this advanced copy. ( )

Tremulous Hinge by Adam Giannelli is the winner of the 2016 Iowa Poetry Prize. Giannelli's poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, Yale Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Tremulous Hinge opens strong with the poem that sets the stage for the rest of the collection -- "Stutter." The poet recites all the things he couldn't say and in that mix comes:

since I can’t say everlasting
I say every
lost thing

He says other things for what he can't say. Ohio instead of Cleveland. He wants pistachio ice but takes the pronounceable hazelnut ice instead. There is a lost thing in not being able to say what you mean. But in writing, the words flow and through the rest of the collection, they flood the reader with wonder. There is an elegance in the written word and in being able to fully express one's self. Perhaps it is like the myth that losing one sense makes the other's more sensitive. His loss of expression in speech makes writing more graceful:

On the citronella candle, a flame glistens
like the tip of a paintbrush
dipped in amber.
It fans out, flattened in the wind,
brush on canvas—
~Sealevel

Reading the poems I had a feeling of reading Leaves of Grass. Not in the subject matter but in that feeling of getting lost in the words as they flowed by and their patterns. There is no formal structure in the writing, but it is unmistakably poetry.

Our love
appoints its kingdom,
but gravity does not elect
or refrain; it effects
its spell over hammer and feather
alike, pebble and petal,
so each at the same rate
falls.
~Gravity

The poet may speak with a tremulous voice but he writes with unwavering confidence. Giannelli's writing reminds the reader what poetry is about. Although sometimes hard to define, poetry still has its roots using language as an enchanted tool expanding words beyond their simple denotations. Tremulous Hinge is such a work. If it found its way into the hands of Whitman, Burke, Shelley, or Byron it would be instantly recognized as poetry. Easily the best poetry I have read this year.



( )

(or wherein I once again prove that the parts of poetry which intrigue me may not be what I am supposed to be talking about)

You know what I really appreciated about Tremulous Hinge: the layout of some of the poems. Like the indentation. Seriously. Or there'd be a thin poem, maybe only eight or nine spaces worth of letters on each line. Then each verse would be only lines long and it would be these little rectangles like a path down the page.

I can hear one of my high school English teacher's sarcasm right now: That's what you think is important about poetry?

Yes. I mean, how do the poets know

   where to end lines and

how much to

             indent?

So I read Tremulous Hinge and thought about that. The poems that were over a page were too long and could have been tightened. One poem mentioned a Catholic grandfather, which made me think of my Catholic grandfather. The poems felt working class, close houses, thin walls lacking insulation (I don't mean that in a negative way, because I read what I just wrote and it sounds super classist. I mean more like you felt you were walking through that sort of neighbourhood as you read the words; some of the poems drew the scene like a photograph).

I wonder how one becomes a poet. It's so different than how I see the world. Sometimes I feel like an alien when I read poetry. I didn't mind so much with Tremulous Hinge though.

Tremulous Hinge by Adam Giannelli went on sale April 15, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )