Alone at the Border by Albert Tacconelli

Alone at the Border offers readers a collage of the tragedy and horrors afflicting displaced families in Syria. The collection of sharp, succinct poems underscores the suffering of a young population longing for normalcy: a house, homeland, friends, and family. Poet Al Tacconnelli creates vivid scenes of a once “lovely Syria” and questions the outside world’s slow response to lost innocence in a land seemed forgotten.

–Amy Barone, poet and author of books Kamikaze Dance and Views from the Driveway

The title of Al Taconelli’s latest collection Alone at the Border communicates the human tragedies of war most of us witness from afar. Taconelli’s Giacometti figures people the backstories of destruction, fear, abandonment and light. Rather than flesh and blood stories with names and carefully outlined faces, Taconelli presents a series of meditations balanced by the author’s profound faith. As long as one human holds the hand of another, or recalls the sound of a song, “The world is still theirs. …” maybe theirs enough, to change.

–Maria Lisella, poet Ghosts in the Family

Al Tacconelli’s latest book of poetry, Alone at the Border, is a wail of agony and a plea for mercy that clears away the fog of political rhetoric that obscures the tragedy known as the Syrian Civil War. In language that lands blow after blow to the gut, Tacconelli compels us to reckon with the essential humanity of the innocent victims of war and challenges us to empathize with and lend support to the survivors and refugees. Amidst the images of bloodshed and cruelty, he weaves an alternative panorama of love and redemption. His book is a strong spiritual tonic to the contemporary forces of anti-immigrant demagoguery.

–Gil Fagiani, author of Logos (Guernica Editions)