Title: The Instrument of Others
Author
: Leonard J. Cirino
Genre: Poetry, Paper, 6 X 9
Publisher: Lummox Press (PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733-5301) www.lummoxpress.com
ISBN: 978-1-929878-33-8
Pages:120

Publishing Date: Mar. 2012

For Leonard's bio and samples from the book, scroll down past the "add to cart buttons"...

Retail: $15 + shipping

All shipping is factored into the "add to cart" price.

USA $18 (includes shipping)
CAN/MEX $20 (includes shipping)

WORLD $27 (includes shipping)

Should you be wary of using PayPal... send a check or Money Order made out to Lummox to:
Lummox Press - PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733

Leonard J. Cirino passed away on March 10, 2012

He is already greatly missed.

Bio:

Leonard J. Cirino (1943 - 2012) was the author of nineteen chapbooks and seventeen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lived in Springfield, Oregon, where he retired and worked full-time as a poet. His full-length collection, Chinese Masters, is from March Street Press, 2009. His 100 page collection, Omphalos: Poems 2007 was published in 2010 from Pygmy Forest Press. A 64 page selection, Tenebrion: Poems 2008 is from Cedar Hill Publications, in 2010. His 60 page collection, Triple Header is due from Cervena Barva Press, E. Somerville, MA in 2012. His collection, Homeland, Exile, Longing & Freedom was published by AA Press in 2011.  He can no longer be reached at cirino7715@comcast.net.

About the book:

In the late 80’s some friends of mine traveled to Europe and left me with several anthology translations from the southern and eastern Europeans and my interest in poetry was restored. I had become very despondent with the quality of US poets since the deaths of Lowell, Berryman, Sexton, Theodore Roethke, and James Wright. Very few US poets spoke to me then and they still do not now. I think this is when I began to find my own voice mixed among the voices of many poets I could relate to – men and women who had been through either the Spanish Civil War or World War 2 – either under Nazi or Communist occupation.

I still devote most of my reading, except for magazines, to poets in translation. I’d say that 75-80% of the poetry I read is in translation because I find people from around the world have far more to say than the poets in the US who are either self-described “outlaws” or belong to the privileged or academic classes and I don’t relate to either of them.

As one of my poems says, “He was hard at work being unemployed,” and only in the last five years of working did I live above the poverty level. I always had food and shelter and enough street smarts to trade for used books and I didn’t want for much more than that. As far as where my writing is going I just keep on keeping on. I have received no awards or grants, won no contests, yet I am among the most devoted, well read, and hardest working poets in the US or anywhere. I don’t have many illusions about success—especially in today’s literary market—so I will go on in my suburban hermit mode and do the real work. Most likely I will keep on reading translations from all over the world and use the poets I read to “inspire” my own work. As this title says, I have become “The Instrument of Others.”

Leonard J. Cirino
 

"Poets like Cirino, who trust in metaphor as a path to poetic and perhaps spiritual enlightenment, who follow European symbolist models in the attempt to de-familiarize the ordinary and expose its full dimensions, and who approach the world with a generosity of perception rather than an intellectual full-court press are not currently in fashion. The publishing world is only occasionally friendly to them."

William Doreski (from the preface)

Some samples...

A Sacred Madness

 

I didn’t want to listen but the wind, the sea,

howled the world’s blood-stained torments.

 

I turned my thoughts inside my ears

and there a scarlet madness screamed.

 

Behind the sky, the moon succumbed

to dawn, the twilight gleamed in pain.

 

My head bowed to darkness,

life was wretched, struggle dreary.

 

Years later I lay down in woods

and bloomed among the ferns.
 

 

The Abyss

 

It was clear at first, later my brain shattered.

After a few years, suddenly I’m old. Back then,

when the wind called I would answer, the birds

tormented me and the ocean’s cries caused aches

in all my tissues. Now, I spy on nature’s aspects;

the alders blow away in peaceful thoughts,

rivers lament the passing of loved ones

I remain grateful to. Man of few talents,

with even less to do, I guard my leisure jealously.

The times are fast, and I am even slower

than past centuries when people carried on

at a graceful pace. Methodical, I walk my dog

in the woods, go out to the hills and streams

fearing the abyss will crush me for having too much.

 

 

Bio

 

Born a small stream, bare trickle,

I grew into a storming river

but learned my place

when I entered the great sea.

 

 

The Way Out

after Du Fu

 

The way out of these mountains forgotten,

checkered moonlight covers the forest floor.

I walk with old ghosts at my side,

my feet make little skitters in the duff.

I don’t know which path to take. A glow leads

us to a logging road. Dog at my knees,

we’re down to meadows and streams. The clearings

temper my fear. Not too far ahead,

my brother’s barn where we will find refuge.

Ten thousand sad atoms twist in the wind.

 


The Windows

 

One’s life lasts an hour or two

in the grand scheme of things.

 

For a while we hear the larks,

the blows come later.

 

What happens when birds sing

and then death stabs hard?

 

One late summer night a voice

reaches down to life’s remains,

 

things calm, the windows close

and open to a different scheme.

 

 

RETURN