Around the Lake by Mo Corleone

Mo Corleone’s brilliant debut collection Around the Lake begins boldly: “the noise is impossible to tune out.” The scorching poems that follow—ghazals, pantoums, abecedarians, nonets, and others—capture the energies and sounds swirling in Oakland’s 2020 streets. Activists, musicians, workers, people in masks, people in traffic—all clamor to be heard in Corleone’s impassioned poems of “fists in electric air,” helicopters, motorcycles, drummers, DJs, “candles flowers screams.” We come to understand how “my soul is rattled from battle/ true justice may not be something i see/ in this life.” Yet the quest for justice and peace echoes urgently throughout Mo Corleone’s artistry within these powerful pages.
–Kathleen McClung, author of A Juror Must Fold in on Herself and Temporary Kin

Uniquely Oakland in flavor, her poems, like 100% dark chocolate, are dense, rich, and delightfully bitter. And gone far too soon – the taste remaining on the tongue dissolves, revealing a mastery of form. Savor this book. Every poem rewards rereading, and sharing aloud with a friend.
–Elaine Watt, Lake County Poet Laureate Emeritus