Lamp of Whispers - New & Selected Prosepoems

The prosepoems (as I spell that) in Lamp of Whispers are selections from eight of my books of poetry-and-prose published 2015 through 2023, and including 40 new prosepoems (plus one older "assay" to start the first section.) I conceived them mainly as vertical pieces, many of them taller than they are wide. My intent is to bring any reader's eyes and ears back to the words more quickly than occurs in reading most prose. It is hoped that a reader will then be more attentive to sonic and textural properties within each piece, a sense of poetry so intimate with prose that I call it prosepoetry. The pieces are often nonlinear and work by associative and sometimes also symbolic interactions.

There is no formal compositional tradition in writing prosepoetry. All prosepoems are an approach, not a poetic "form" (beyond their container shapes, mostly rectangles, on a page.) Or put it this way: form occurs as you are reading, as an approach is made to that mountain peak, poetry itself. The peak's in the path up.

-David Giannini