Peter Gizzi – författare

WINNER OF THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2024The powerful new collection from legendary American poet Peter Gizzi, reckoning with the transformative power of elegy through poems of lament and love‘I am awestruck, dumbfounded … a masterwork’ Ocean Vuong'Transcendent ... He identifies the thing we're all searching for' The New YorkerIn Fierce Elegy, Peter Gizzi contends with a decade of grief, and learns to transform a broken heart into new strength. These are poems of loss; of love; of the strangeness of being a self amid the fury of the world; and of our ongoing closeness with the dead. They are soaring yet grounded, vulnerable and brave. Ears attuned, grip assured. Mind free.

Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection reminds us that the elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a work of loveIn Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection, we find, in the poet's words, that "the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world." For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, "a holding open." In Gizzi's voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. One of our foremost practitioners of the lyric, Gizzi here extends his mastery of the form. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a mode of love poetry as well. "This new poetry," Kamau Brathwaite has written about Gizzi, "taking such care of temperature - the time & details of the world - meaning the space(s) in which we live - defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. A way of writing about hope."[sample poem]Creely Songall that is lovelyin words, evenif gone to piecesall that is lovelygone, all of itfor love andautobiographyas if I werewriting thishello, listenthe plan isthe body andall of it for lovenow in piecesall that is lovelyechoes stillin life & deathstill memorygardens openonto windowslovely, the charmthat mirrorsall that was, allthat is, lovelyin a song

Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection reminds us that the elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a work of loveIn Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection, we find, in the poet's words, that "the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world." For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, "a holding open." In Gizzi's voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. One of our foremost practitioners of the lyric, Gizzi here extends his mastery of the form. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a mode of love poetry as well. "This new poetry," Kamau Brathwaite has written about Gizzi, "taking such care of temperature - the time & details of the world - meaning the space(s) in which we live - defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. A way of writing about hope."[sample poem]Creely Songall that is lovelyin words, evenif gone to piecesall that is lovelygone, all of itfor love andautobiographyas if I werewriting thishello, listenthe plan isthe body andall of it for lovenow in piecesall that is lovelyechoes stillin life & deathstill memorygardens openonto windowslovely, the charmthat mirrorsall that was, allthat is, lovelyin a song

Illuminates Jack Spicer's provocative lectures on radical poetics.The House That Jack Built collects for the first time the four historic talks given by controversial poet Jack Spicer just before his early death in 1965. These lively and provocative lectures function as a gloss to Spicer's own poetry, a general discourse on poetics, and a cautionary handbook for young poets. This long-awaited document of Spicer's unorthodox poetic vision, what Robin Blaser has called "the practice of outside," is an authoritative edition of an underground classic. Peter Gizzi's afterword elucidates some of the fundamental issues of Spicer's poetry and lectures, including the concept of poetic dictation, which Spicer renovates with vocabularies of popular culture: radio, Martians, and baseball; his use of the California landscape as a backdrop for his poems; and his visual imagination in relation to the aesthetics of west-coast funk assemblage. This book delivers a firsthand account of the contrary and turbulent poetics that define Spicer's ongoing contribution to an international avant-garde.

Illuminates Jack Spicer's provocative lectures on radical poeticsThe House That Jack Built collects for the first time the four historic talks given by controversial poet Jack Spicer just before his early death in 1965. These lively and provocative lectures function as a gloss to Spicer's own poetry, a general discourse on poetics, and a cautionary handbook for young poets. This long-awaited document of Spicer's unorthodox poetic vision, what Robin Blaser has called "the practice of outside," is an authoritative edition of an underground classic.Peter Gizzi's afterword elucidates some of the fundamental issues of Spicer's poetry and lectures, including the concept of poetic dictation, which Spicer renovates with vocabularies of popular culture: radio, Martians, and baseball; his use of the California landscape as a backdrop for his poems; and his visual imagination in relation to the aesthetics of west-coast funk assemblage. This book delivers a firsthand account of the contrary and turbulent poetics that define Spicer's ongoing contribution to an international avant-garde.

SOME JOY FOR MORNINGNow the connection with springhas dissolved. Now that hysteria is blooming.Says every day I want to fly my kite.Says what's a grammar when you is no longer you.My world is hydrogen burning in space and in the fullness of etc. I have read the news and learned nothing.I try to understand thewhooshing overhead. But for a little light now.I didn't realize the treewas weeping. How was I to know I am not alone. Wildlight.The poems in this brilliant follow-up to the National Book Award finalist Archeophonics, are concerned with grieving, with poetry and death, with beauty and sadness, with light. As Ben Lerner has written, "Gizzi's poetry is an example of how a poet's total tonal attention can disclose new orders of sensation and meaning. His beautiful lines are full of deft archival allusion." With litany, elegy, and prose, Gizzi continues his pursuit toward a lyric of reality. Saturated with luminous detail, these original poems possess, even in their sorrowing moments, a dizzying freedom.

Gathered from over thirty years of work, the poems in this generous selection strike a dynamic balance of honesty, emotion, intellectual depth and otherworldly resonance - in Gizzi's work, poetry itself becomes a primary ground of human experience. Haunted, vibrant and saturated with luminous detail, Gizzi enlists the American vernacular in a magical and complex music. Sky Burial is an immensely valuable introduction to his work.Watch Peter Gizzi read from Sky Burial online here.

Periplum and other poems brings together Peter Gizzi’s celebrated and influential first book, out of print for nearly a decade, with 60 pages of early and uncollected work, including the long poem “Music for Films.” This new edition functions as a collected poems of Gizzi’s work from 1987 to 1992. John Ashbery hailed Gizzi as “the most exciting poet to come along in quite a while.” The vibrancy and immediacy of Gizzi’s poems constitute 21st-century lyricism at its best, a richly complex music engaged with the crucial questions of and around contemporary culture. Michael Boughn wrote in the Poetry Project Newsletter that “Periplum reveals and shatters an unspeakably fragile world ... emerging with a new knowing, a knowing that matters, as in matters of life and death.” His poems achieve a delicate balance of emotional and intellectual richness and the sense of poetry itself as a primary ground of human experience.