Devious Sentiments by James Capozzi

James Capozzi’s wonderful Devious Sentiments collects a sequence of musical vignettes for a North America starting to singe at the edges. Its song is for all of us who feel the flames and want to weaponize those feelings. This book is grim, and fierce, but reflective and full of possibility. We know “the rich have eaten already.” But the places and people Capozzi writes about are full of promising sounds regardless: songs, hummings, murmurs, clamors. Devious sentiments. Bad feelings that might save us.  This book is an atlas of modern work and struggle, resting on the border between cynicism and the hope that a new world might blossom in the burned shell of the old. It doesn’t have an answer exactly, but offers a map of little rivulets: “Jesus / the daily life of every single living thing / you think about it as much as possible / you write it all down.”

–Brandon Brown, author of The Four Seasons

James Capozzi’s rural gothic poetry reproduces and makes visible the fibers that bind together the small-scale detritus of everyday life and the large scale political systems that produce that detritus: our affects, our objects, our labor. Capozzi’s diction and sound work evoke a fluid movement between the past—and the social movements of the past—and the current political moment. As dark as this book is—and it is quite dark—it suggests a consciousness and collectivity that moves through history. Read this book to sit with your devastation, to feel the possibility of a better world, to bolster yourself, via the long arc of shitty history, for the work of getting there.

–Marie Buck, author of Goodnight, Marie, May God Have Mercy on Your Soul and Portrait of Doom

The poet George Oppen once described poetry as a “rigorous test of sincerity.” James Capozzi in this second collection has more than lived up to Oppen’s definition. These poems invite re-reading and admiration at both their skill and their inventiveness. Capozzi never compromises his standards nor does he condescend to his reader. This is a superb book of poems.

 –Joe Weil, author of A Night in Duluth