ABOUT Vincent Spina
Vincent Spina was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944. He was educated at Fordham, Columbia and New York University. His primary field is Andean Literature and he has lived and worked in Peru and Ecuador for many years. Currently, he lives and teaches in Clarion, Pennsylvania. He has published poetry in various literary magazines and has also published criticism on Latin American and Andean themes.
Outer Borough
by Vincent Spina
ISBN: 978-1-931247-53-5 $17
“The poetry of Vincent Spina in Outer Borough signals the discovery of a sophisticated sensibility and the recovery of an accomplished poet heretofore overlooked. His elegiac narratives inhabit a fading time-frame of ‘how she looked in that fabulous/forties photo taken only minutes before old age/ sprung from the ground and twined around her ankle.’ While these compositions seem casually played in conversational tones, such subtle variations on themes of survival and loss can only be sung convincingly by a seasoned and elegant voice.”
—Robert Bonazzi
“Vincent Spina’s poetry is distinguished by a remarkably supple line, fluent in many idioms and fluid in many emotional states, ridiculous to sublime. No poet more easily offers himself to be read, even as he slips away into eloquence.”
—Terry Caesar
Out There
With whom do I share this secret
of my passing? Sometimes you rise
from a small bay as natural as spume
topping a wave and left for a moment
to burn silver, but only for a moment.
I don’t know you
—where you have been, who has loved you—
but only sense you as a substance
diffused through the grand ballroom
after the dance has ended,
or only through the foliage of a river’s bank
where you have squeezed yourself
to escape a parade that marches on
without real joy or purpose. Yet,
there are my secrets. Touch here, there,
and they flow like a juice from an over-
ripe fruit long suspected of being
injurious to one’s health. Your hand hovers
over them, or picks each one up
to lay it down once more, like a nurse at mid-
night attending the unconscious patient.
Copyright © Pecan
Grove Press,
1997-2003
For further information contact
H. Palmer
Hall.
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Most recent revision
November 11, 2003
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