Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems by Francis DiClemente

In Dreaming of Lemon Trees, poet Francis DiClemente has given us a retrospective of his deeply affecting poems from three earlier books. The power of the selected works presented here resides in DiClemente’s no-holds-barred vision of life. He gives us people—himself, his family, even strangers—with such vivid language that we know them. And we care about them—a pregnant bridesmaid, a mother at a school bus stop, Mr. Brown in the park and of course, the poet himself.   Place, too, feels like a character in this collection. Located mostly in the rust belt of upstate New York, the reader is reminded of William Kennedy’s Ironweed, with its cold wind and grit. Again, DiClemente’s skill with incisive, descriptive language gives the collection a filmic quality, allowing us to see what he sees, feel what he feels. These poems are full of intense emotion, but with their sharp vision and language, they are never sentimental. This is a collection of note.

–Kathleen Kramer, poet and playwright

Poet Francis DiClemente covers a lot of ground in this deeply affecting collection: love, loss, family and religion.   Dreaming of Lemon Trees is a study in contrast—selected poems that address life’s duality and the pain and suffering that often accompany it. Issues of self-worth figure prominently in these poems, owing to a pituitary tumor that DiClemente suffered during adolescence, hindering his “normal progression” and sending any sense of normalcy into a tailspin. Yet this self-described “modern Prodigal Son” does not bemoan his fate as much as he contemplates it.   Like most confessional poetry, DiClemente’s is unflinchingly honest and at times autumnal; it also is funny and beautiful. He flirts with rhythm and meter, but not at the expense of telling a good story. In the tradition of Charles Bukowksi, DiClemente takes American lowlife poetry to new heights, and shows us there can be redemption through chaos.

–Rob Enslin, journalist and author

Francis DiClemente’s Dreaming of Lemon Trees brings together poems from three previous collections, poems of keen perception and introspection, of solitude and yearning. Throughout, the flavor and texture of DiClemente’s central New York home carry through—from old movie theaters to the “cavernous darkness” of basement poker clubs, from backyards to strip malls to a stadium’s “small town pride.” In many of the most moving poems here, DiClemente explores his experiences with a pituitary deficiency that significantly delayed puberty and kept him “like a boy wrapped in toddler’s clothes.” The exploration of masculinity in these pieces is brave, frank and necessary. “My dreams are reasonable,” he writes in one poem, “I just want the man to sneak out … to unveil his beauty like a sunset extended …” And here, he does just that.

–Philip Memmer, author of Pantheon