Appearing on the first page of Dante Di Stefano's Midwhistle, a flock of blackbirds braids its way throughout this book-length poem--an elegy to life itself. A sprawling, digressive love note to an unborn son, it is also a celebration of the life and legacy of poet William Heyen, a meditation on midlife, and an exploration of the food and fuel of poetry itself.

Di Stefano travels through a controlled stream of consciousness as he examines the weights of joy and grief. Bearing witness to the world, Midwhistle unfolds and refolds upon itself, touching on Hiroshima, Bergen-Belsen, Charlottesville, the sacoglossan sea slug, Darwin's Arch, and much more. Stylistically formal, the poem soars and dips, lightly and deftly finding the light in nighttime meditations, as the poet considers "our Unyet son, lemon-sized, / amniotic cosmonaut," while imagining Heyen at his own age, "the thin black necktie of your / apprenticeship had not been / taken off yet."

In these examinations we find the poet himself, faced always with a "blinking / cursor," seeking in the words and lives of other poets what it really means to write poetry. Midwhistle, in its meandering self-reflection and loving expansiveness, is a celebration of the act of poetic creation itself.
Remember, to be human is to be broken &, to be broken, is to see the almond blossom burst under the closed eyelids of

your beloved.
--Excerpt from "xxiii. (interlude: prayer for Gaza)"

Author: Dante Di Stefano
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 03/21/2023
Series: Wisconsin Poetry
Pages: 116
Weight: 0.3lbs
Size: 7.32h x 5.43w x 0.39d
ISBN: 9780299341541

About the Author
Dante Di Stefano has published three previous poetry collections, including Ill Angels, and co-edited the anthology, Misrepresented People. A prize-winning author, he earned his PhD in English from Binghamton University and lives in Endwell, New York.