Spring 2015
DAN TESSITORE
In His Own Words:
Song of My Elf was written (mostly) for fun, with an obvious nod to Whitman. Frankly, it feels like it needs another stanza, but the damn elf won't tell me what it is. After Years Abroad: The italicized lines I stole from Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen. Conspiracy Theory is a poem I began in the 90s and just "finished" last fall. It's spark was the constant messages, from one corner of the media or another, that the world is going to end any minute now. Whether it's demonic aliens from Planet X, climate change, or the Illuminati, something or someone is always just about to do in the entire planet. It never happens, of course (maybe that's why the poem took so long). First Night in the Planned City: Aleuromancy is an ancient form of divination in which written messages are baked into balls of dough -- in modern terms, fortune cookies. Done Thing: If you go to Japan, spend a couple days in Tokyo, one in Hiroshima, and the next ten winters visiting the hot springs. The Gap is a play on the Georg Hermes quote: "Death is like an arrow that is already in flight..." My epigram does nothing to improve that observation but attempts to have a little fun with the follow-up question. All I can say about Clue: Moirai is, hey, true story. Fantasy Art: Of all the ekphrastic poems I've read, not one has featured tiger-gods, wolf-kings, or lingerie-clad empresses and their pet panthers, and that's just wrong.
[And] here's the link to a couple of poems that appeared in The Common Online just over a year ago
www.thecommononline.org/bio/dan-tessitore
