A LONGING SO COMPLETE

by Daniela Gioseffi

Talking with you, my dead Love, I’m glad
I married quarrelsome you.
Without you, I’d have simmered to silence,
alienated, impractical,
easily taken for a ride to nowhere or Hell.

Your cynical wit saved me
from my untamed passions
you said enchanted you. I loved you more
than I knew, though I can’t tell you,
now all ashes.

Thank you for having loved me,
amidst the chaos of burning animals
consuming life.

You’re gone beyond lips, eyes, hands, touch,
except in my grieving heart
your voice, your face,
a fading sound and image in ravenous time,
eating my memory of you.

There’s no longing so complete
as the desire to talk with the dead.

From: 
BLOOD AUTUMN: New & Selected Poems (VIA Folios/ Bordighera Press, at The City U. of NY




Daniela Gioseffi's picture

ABOUT THE POET ~
Daniela Gioseffi is an American Book award-winning author of fourteen books of poetry and prose. WOMEN ON WAR: INTERNATIONAL WRITINGS (Simon & Schuster, 1988, & The Feminist Press: NY, 2003), and ON PREJUDICE; A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE (Anchor/Doubleday, 1993) are two World Peace Award winning compendiums of poetry and prose edited and introduced by Gioseffi and presented at the U.N. Daniela taught at the City U of NY, Pace U., NYU, LIU, and lectured throughout the USA. She’s won two grant awards in poetry from The NY State Council for the Arts; a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Association of Italian American Educators, 2003; a New York State OSIA Literary Award, 2008; and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry, 2007. She presented her work on National Public Radio in the US, and on the BBC throughout the UK. Her verse was etched in marble on a wall of New York’s PENN Station in 2002. Daniela edits www.PoetsUSA.com. Her newest book is a biographical novel: WILD NIGHTS, WILD NIGHTS: THE STORY OF EMILY DICKINSON'S MASTER (Plain View Press, 2010.) with a non-fiction afterword upon which the novel is based. She’s with the Emily Dickinson’s Scholars Registry. Her latest book of poetry is BLOOD AUTUMN: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, 2007, VIA FOLIOS/ Bordighera Press, at The City U. of NY. Her work has appeared in innumerable periodicals from THE PARIS REVIEW to VIA, POETRY EAST, CHOICE, and THE NATION. She has published six books of poetry, the first with BOA Editions, 1977 was titled EGGS IN THE LAKE, and contained poems that won a NY State Council for the Arts, National Endowment grant award. She has read her work widely throughout the USA and Europe. Her work has been translated in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Serbo Croation among other languages, and published in Europe from Vienna to London, and in Japan. She has written many poetry book reviews for varied publications and published two novels and a book of short stories, as well as poetry in many anthologies from Oxford U. Press, to Viking: NY. More information can be found at PEN AMERICAN CENTER's website:Daniela Gioseffi: PEN AMERICAN CENTER Webpage: http://www.pen.org/MemberProfile.php/prmProfileID/19901, Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniela_Gioseffi, Editor/ Publisher http://www.PoetsUSA.com/, The Poet and the Poem, Library of Congress Radio Show Webcast: Scroll down at: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html, and many other sites on the internet.


Last updated May 23, 2011