cover image Carnations

Carnations

Anthony Carelli. Princeton Univ., $24.95 (72p) ISBN 978-0-691-14944-8; $12.95 trade paper ISBN 978-0-691-14945-5

Carelli's debut introduces a voice as refreshingly contemporary as it is pleasantly expansive in its subject matter. In the first poem, the speaker and his girlfriend play Frisbee in Prospect Park while horses interrupt the scene; in another, two young friends journey down a river and are surprised by older men on a footbridge staring on. In both, the innocuous autobiographical material establishes quite impressively Carelli's tensile strength%E2%80%94to meditate, in a colloquial tongue, on matters of faith and spirit; to bend a vaguely iambic line into well-combed tercets, or more subdued free-verse lines. The results are as elegant and eloquent as they are humane and believable. In "The Disciples," among other poems, Carelli considers faith and, in this case, pays homage to Ovid, imagining a conversation in a Wisconsin pub, borrowing poetic rhythms from well-worn Catholic prayers: Ovid, full of grace,/ you'll never survive a night in this snow. So,/ when the drifts take your legs and you call out,/ may I know enough to know it's too late,/ that the time has come to leave you behind." (May)