The New World, Carmine Starnino, Signal Editions - Véhicule Press, po box 125, Place du Parc Station, Monteal Quebec H2W 2W9 Canada pp. 53, Price $9.95

I first experienced Carmine Starnino’s poetry at his TREE reading in June. The quality of his craft was evident. To digest the poetry of his debut collection The New World in print was even more satisfying. I had time to forage through his orderly stanzas, slowly harvest all the ripe berries there and eat until the juices ran down my neck. This book will fatten your brain.

There is a hushed tone to The New World, it is reminiscent of Starnino’s own soft presence on the stage at Irene’s, and it accompanies his carefully penned lines that observe family life with reverence.

The first poems look at Anthony, a younger brother. I find myself wanting to tell you all the stories about Anthony learning to fly, read, dress and find the moon. Or about his mother singing

Until all that remains is the sleep
that fills his head like warm water,
and gently washes against its
delicate shell of bone.

But that wouldn’t be fair. You must drink the poems yourself.

Starnino gently unfolds the stories about other members of his family in a brilliant treatment steeped in honesty and smooth poetic sense.

I would like this, finally, to be

a story of love. But the truth is
my father was an unhappy man,
his head was heavy, and sometimes
he rested it in his hands.

I sat with the mother, father, cousin, uncle and aunt before turning to meditations based on Caravaggio’s paintings of saints, adaptations of Italian poems and finally a handful of spiritual poems. The progression from familiar household scenes to the world of the divine is like a bass descending the scale in a rumbling crescendo. The reverence afforded family members gives way to an unusually everyday examination of biblical characters. Starnino enters a cave with Peter, and looks into Mary’s fearful, protective dreams about her three-year-old son. I fell out of the book leaving Balthazar under “a sky that scarcely holds enough of the moon / to give me a shadow.”

A review by Jennifer Comeau

Welcome to this special issue of graffito. This is the first time I've taken a direct hand in choosing a poem for the poster since we started using Guest Editors to choose the poetic content. I decided I was going to do a special issue after I heard Jeff Bien read at the TREE Reading Series, co-hosted by rob mclennan & myself. I was so taken by his poetry that I asked if I could reprint my favourite poem from that reading in an upcoming issue.

Jeff Bien has written poems from many corners of the world, but persists in returning to the sanctuary of his home in Kemptville Ontario. Quarry Press has recently published two of his books of poetry: America & other poems and Prosody at the café du coin. Presently he is completing work on a CD of his poetry to be released in the new year.

Bien's work has received wide acclaim in Europe & has been published & translated in more than a dozen countries. According to a profile appearing in Cafe Monthly, when Bien read at Shakespeare & Company in Paris (the largest & most famous English Antiquarian bookstore on the Continent) he drew one of the largest audiences in memory. Not bad considering Shakespeare & Company has seen the best Western writers of this century come through it's doors.

The poem Bien read which caught my imagination is called America. In one of many reviews, Poetry Canada wrote "The poem "America"... could (should in fact) topple an empire... A major voice has emerged." John Millet of Poetry Australia refers to Bien as, "A ruthless, truth-telling poet", and City Lights, San Francisco, has called his work "Potent and persuasive"."

Besides featuring a single poem for the first time, graffito is doing three versions of this issue.  America has been translated into several languages, most recently by Robert Cordier of Paris (translator of the standard version of Howl). The poem has also been rendered into Russian by Ottawa poet Daniel Nadezhdin.

For this issue of graffito there will be three runs -- 250 copies of our basic white issue & 500 on 70 lbs. Nekoosa Parchment Text with half in French & half in English. The French version will come out later this fall once Robert Cordier has completed the French translation.