Knowing the Moment

Love is the mouth
that tears rind,
that chews pulp
and sucks juices.
Love is the mouth
that swallows seeds.
And love is the mouth
that bitches
at orange bits
stuck in its teeth.

From the Introduction

There is something elemental about the poetry of Emanuel di Pasquale, an immediacy that comes from a direct and visceral relation to whatever he is writing about-whether nature or human interaction. It is the kind of directness that di Pasquale admires in Whitman and Dickinson-evidence that he, like them, has more than an academic acquaintance with the world and its changes. He has experienced them and understands how to make us experience them, too, through words.