As I engage with Vincent Van Gogh in Matthew Cariello’s SELF PORTRAIT IN THE DARK, I am instructed to “sit very still / for as long as you can bear.” Cariello immerses the reader in Van Gogh’s wheat fields, black cypresses, the psyche of the artist, and “each color your palette could hold.” I found myself stopping after each line, looking up, pondering how “everything / flees overturns changes /places with stars.” Cariello’s collection transcends ekphrastic poetry, enters “the heart of the field,” and exists in “love or longing / or a third thing /unnamed.” I will return to this book again and again.
–Jennifer Martelli, author of The Queen of Queens (Bordighera Press)
Step into the vibrant world of Vincent van Gogh, brought to life in this collection of poetry by Matthew Cariello. Self Portrait in the Dark traverses the artist’s and the poet’s inner landscapes— from the exuberance of ‘Sunflowers’ to the melancholy of ‘Starry Night.’
–Julie Schwerin, author of still growing wings (Backbone Press)
Self Portrait in Dark is a melodic stroll through the paintings and letters of Vincent Van Gogh. As with ekphrastic poetry in general, Cariello’s poetry sets up the tension between the spatial and temporal, between the visual and verbal. Cariello’s poems also set up the tension between the poet and the artist, illuminating the path between the brush stroke and the word.
–Randy Prus, author of On the Cusp of Memory (Mercury Heartlink), Professor Emeritus, Southeastern Oklahoma State University
In Self Portrait in the Dark, Matthew Cariello blends the blues, yellows and greens of Van Gogh with Christ’s blood on his own life’s palette as a poet. Masterfully spare, the poems echo Van Gogh’s compulsion to capture the world with his brush: “there is more in/ his head in my mind/ than my hand/ could imagine// & so more// of me.” Cariello offers his poems as living bread: “hair sky eyes skirt fruit// take it from me/ our last meal pure light.” This book is a feast for the yearning soul.
–Pegi Deitz Shea, two time winner of the Connecticut Book Award
In “How to Pray,” the second poem in Matt Cariello’s new poetry collection, he declares, “… this body must/give itself away/in secret there/can be no regret/no longing for/what was never yours” and thus we fall into step with him as he creates His Self Portrait in the Dark. Cariello serves up wisdom, heartache, light and intimacy that could inspire readers to follow this humble and at times, steadfast guide.
The poems are at turns tense and harrowing as they glide and stumble over terrains of loss, tradition, passages such as leaving home all the while unapologetically referring to Jesus and the human need to persevere, locate the stillness within. From “Sunflowers”: “… lay my body down/beside that wall & wait years to find/some use for/the silence that lives in/side me I will see how thousands/of small deaths become one…”
Cariello is a deliberate writer, who is tuned in to the nuance of every word, punctuation and line break. In his last poem, “The Bedroom at Arles,” the author finds the place that gives him the most comfort and the place he will revisit: “…it was telling me a story getting/it right wasn’t the point I would lie/there long minutes listening/to my insides turn & surge not/getting any better & not wishing to.”
–Maria Lisella, author of Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books)
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