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Article: We're here because we're here.(Brother Fire)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Poetry
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Poetry Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Brother Fire, by W. S. Di Piero. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.00.
The poems in Brother Fire take memory as epiphany, enabling the poet to shuttle between present and past, between mundane reality--"the wall's / filthy cracks"--and illumination--"a silted fountain of prayer"--as if walking from room to room. The speakers in W.S. Di Piero's new collection, his seventh, are typically on the point of stumbling on an earlier version of themselves, in an unexpected location. An example is "Ten P.M. in Kezar's." Kezar's, we assume, is a bar; the hour is late and the poet is alone; but the scene as the poem opens is of
young hands at a piano,
vinyl-covered sofa, ...