Between Merwin and Greger, Overtones of Poetry by Glenn D’Alessio

Glenn D’Alessio is a carpenter, jazz flutist, and former college instructor in energy conservation and green building, incorporating environmental science into his teaching. His Finishing Line Press chapbooks include In My Sea Cliff Years of Innocence; A Carpenter’s Building, Homes for His Poems; and Some Tanka in Thanks to Elroy, Not the Most Cantankerous Dog. His poems have appeared in Sahara Journal, Cellar Roots, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Borderlands, and Virgogray Press: Chapbook Edition. His awards include placements in Poetic Voices of America, the S. C. Robertson Memorial Contest, the Bushey Brothers Memorial Award, and an Honorable Mention in the Frank O’Hara Prize for a poem in The Worcester Review (2022). Website: glennpoetry.com

It takes courage to sit at the feet of the masters: courage, humility, and an open heart. Glenn D’Alessio decided years ago that W. S. Merwin and Debora Greger were poets who might offer touchstones of instruction for him in his own work. Steeped in jazz and a master carpenter, D’Alessio — teacher, builder of homes, flutist in multiple jazz ensembles, has constructed a book of poems compelled by the imagery and language of both Merwin and Greger. Unafraid of the music of rhyme or the language of science, he creates a home echoing the ghost of each master. Between Merwin and Greger, Overtones of Poetry is a home of many rooms, each with its own central thematic joist. Open the door. Call out to the voices that live there. Enter. Listen. The conversation flows through the poems, rather than merely existing with them, emphasizing that the poems themselves are the language of dialogue.

–Jonathan Blake, author of In the Kingdom