John Tessitore's Blog
January 26, 2025
The American Spirit in January 2025
I should have known I was preparing a Jeremiad.
I wrote the poems in my new little book, Apocrypha: Poems, over several years, though most were written in 2024.
They flooded out every so often, and when they came I was obsessive about them.
Also a little concerned: When did I become so mystical?
Now I know I was responding to a crisis on the horizon, less like a mystic and more like a prophet. (I’m a Whitman scholar, after all. It comes with the territory.)
This is from the description on the back cover:
“Most organized religions are textual, handed down in books and scrolls.
“John Tessitore’s Apocrypha: Poems is a collection of poems in the scriptural tradition—the Judeo-Christian tradition in particular—that question what it means to be spiritual in the twenty-first century. Some re-evaluate ancient teachings, some revise ancient stories, some tell new stories in a new way.
“All imagine a living canon that changes with the times, and that can be rewritten as we accumulate new knowledge and a better understanding of each other.”
And all of this is true. That’s how I understood what I was writing. But I’m publishing this book in January 2025, in the United States of America, and its meaning has shifted slightly, at least for me.
Yes, it remains a re-evaluation of spirituality--and of the stories, poems, and songs that provide the foundations for spirituality. But in 2025, in the United States of America, such a book can only be a Jeremiad, a lamentation about our ethical and moral decay.
It can only be about straying from righteousness.
In a previous period of war and corruption, in the 6h century BCE, the Prophet Jeremiah declared, “My heritage has turned on me like a lion in the jungle; Because she has roared against me, I treat her as an enemy.”
Apocrypha is about reclaiming our heritage.
You can find it, and all of my work, at www.johntessitore.com.
I wrote the poems in my new little book, Apocrypha: Poems, over several years, though most were written in 2024.
They flooded out every so often, and when they came I was obsessive about them.
Also a little concerned: When did I become so mystical?
Now I know I was responding to a crisis on the horizon, less like a mystic and more like a prophet. (I’m a Whitman scholar, after all. It comes with the territory.)
This is from the description on the back cover:
“Most organized religions are textual, handed down in books and scrolls.
“John Tessitore’s Apocrypha: Poems is a collection of poems in the scriptural tradition—the Judeo-Christian tradition in particular—that question what it means to be spiritual in the twenty-first century. Some re-evaluate ancient teachings, some revise ancient stories, some tell new stories in a new way.
“All imagine a living canon that changes with the times, and that can be rewritten as we accumulate new knowledge and a better understanding of each other.”
And all of this is true. That’s how I understood what I was writing. But I’m publishing this book in January 2025, in the United States of America, and its meaning has shifted slightly, at least for me.
Yes, it remains a re-evaluation of spirituality--and of the stories, poems, and songs that provide the foundations for spirituality. But in 2025, in the United States of America, such a book can only be a Jeremiad, a lamentation about our ethical and moral decay.
It can only be about straying from righteousness.
In a previous period of war and corruption, in the 6h century BCE, the Prophet Jeremiah declared, “My heritage has turned on me like a lion in the jungle; Because she has roared against me, I treat her as an enemy.”
Apocrypha is about reclaiming our heritage.
You can find it, and all of my work, at www.johntessitore.com.
September 29, 2024
Terminal D and the Poetry of Yearning
Yearning.
Yearning is not the same as desire.
Desire has an object, and there’s an answer for it.
Possess the thing you desire—the car, the house, the person—and you’ve satisfied that particular desire.
Other desires will surely follow. We all want stuff constantly. But individual desires can be met in the moment.
In fact, capitalism depends on the never-ending cycle of desire and satisfaction.
But capitalism has no answer for yearning.
Because yearning is existential, spiritual…it’s the knowledge that we’re part of something grand, bigger than ourselves, even though we can’t quite touch it.
Yearning has an object, but it’s hard to say just what the object might be.
Maybe…a connection?
Terminal D: A Poem is a poem about yearning.
It’s set in an airport bar, a place of intense loneliness and random interaction, of anticipation and waiting, of expectation and frustration, and connection, and missed connection.
It’s the stream-of-consciousness of a man sitting among strangers, nursing a weak drink and a tired mind that has too much time to think. It’s the past, present and future all at once.
A soul yearning for connection.
You can find Terminal D, and all of my work, at johntessitore.com.
Yearning is not the same as desire.
Desire has an object, and there’s an answer for it.
Possess the thing you desire—the car, the house, the person—and you’ve satisfied that particular desire.
Other desires will surely follow. We all want stuff constantly. But individual desires can be met in the moment.
In fact, capitalism depends on the never-ending cycle of desire and satisfaction.
But capitalism has no answer for yearning.
Because yearning is existential, spiritual…it’s the knowledge that we’re part of something grand, bigger than ourselves, even though we can’t quite touch it.
Yearning has an object, but it’s hard to say just what the object might be.
Maybe…a connection?
Terminal D: A Poem is a poem about yearning.
It’s set in an airport bar, a place of intense loneliness and random interaction, of anticipation and waiting, of expectation and frustration, and connection, and missed connection.
It’s the stream-of-consciousness of a man sitting among strangers, nursing a weak drink and a tired mind that has too much time to think. It’s the past, present and future all at once.
A soul yearning for connection.
You can find Terminal D, and all of my work, at johntessitore.com.
August 6, 2024
Dark Days, Compassion, and Heel: A Life
I’m not exactly sunny by temperament. I can be a bit of a crank. But I’m not exactly dark either.
I grew up in a happy household. A complicated household, too. In hindsight, with a half-century under my belt, I can see now that it was a very complicated household. But the baseline, for me, was happy.
Nevertheless, as my therapist said the first time I met him, “The hurricane comes for everyone.”
Long story for another time. But the hurricane came for me, and stuck around for a very long while, and upended everything.
And after it passed I realized that the effect of that storm may be even more important that its causes.
Because the effect, once you survive the storm, and inspect it, and learn from it—as I’ve tried to do—is wisdom.
In my case, wisdom means a greater familiarity with darkness—with struggle, and pain, and panic, and hunger, and unhappiness…and with my own weaknesses and failures. I’ve come face-to-face with many of the things I’d been able to avoid growing up in a happy household.
The hurricane made me wiser because it allowed…no, it forced me to see that there was only a slight difference between happiness and despair. One or the other is always one coin flip a way. One word. One look. One decision. A hair’s breadth.
Suddenly, from the throes of my own dark night, I could see that there was darkness in everyone’s life—and that the darkness may actually unite us as humans.
The darkness, and the wisdom that results, are the root of compassion.
You can find some of that compassion, I hope, in my most recent chapbook, The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments, which is a literary journey through the forbidden energies—the creative and erotic in particular—that make us human.
And now you can find a little more of that compassion in Heel: A Life, a companion volume that tells the true story of a popular villain from the world of entertainment. Or, as the ad copy says:
“A modern folk tale. A celebrity tell-all. A story of villainy. A life told in reverse. Heel is a poem about someone you may know, but never like this…”
I won’t spoil the experience by telling you whose life story I’ve set to verse in this short booklet. (In some ways, the person’s real identity should not even matter.) I will only say that Heel is a poem I could not have written before the hurricane came for me. It is a book about darkness, that is a gift of the darkness.
I see it as a very strange act of compassion. I hope you will too.
You can download it for free at johntessitore.com.
I grew up in a happy household. A complicated household, too. In hindsight, with a half-century under my belt, I can see now that it was a very complicated household. But the baseline, for me, was happy.
Nevertheless, as my therapist said the first time I met him, “The hurricane comes for everyone.”
Long story for another time. But the hurricane came for me, and stuck around for a very long while, and upended everything.
And after it passed I realized that the effect of that storm may be even more important that its causes.
Because the effect, once you survive the storm, and inspect it, and learn from it—as I’ve tried to do—is wisdom.
In my case, wisdom means a greater familiarity with darkness—with struggle, and pain, and panic, and hunger, and unhappiness…and with my own weaknesses and failures. I’ve come face-to-face with many of the things I’d been able to avoid growing up in a happy household.
The hurricane made me wiser because it allowed…no, it forced me to see that there was only a slight difference between happiness and despair. One or the other is always one coin flip a way. One word. One look. One decision. A hair’s breadth.
Suddenly, from the throes of my own dark night, I could see that there was darkness in everyone’s life—and that the darkness may actually unite us as humans.
The darkness, and the wisdom that results, are the root of compassion.
You can find some of that compassion, I hope, in my most recent chapbook, The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments, which is a literary journey through the forbidden energies—the creative and erotic in particular—that make us human.
And now you can find a little more of that compassion in Heel: A Life, a companion volume that tells the true story of a popular villain from the world of entertainment. Or, as the ad copy says:
“A modern folk tale. A celebrity tell-all. A story of villainy. A life told in reverse. Heel is a poem about someone you may know, but never like this…”
I won’t spoil the experience by telling you whose life story I’ve set to verse in this short booklet. (In some ways, the person’s real identity should not even matter.) I will only say that Heel is a poem I could not have written before the hurricane came for me. It is a book about darkness, that is a gift of the darkness.
I see it as a very strange act of compassion. I hope you will too.
You can download it for free at johntessitore.com.
June 5, 2024
In Defense of Hubris and The Dark Ways Mysterious
Our favorite villains are the ones who deal in forbidden knowledge.
Prometheus. Milton’s Satan. Eve.
They’re the ones who are warned that knowledge is reserved for the divine, and steal it anyway.
We have learned to label their acts as “hubris,” the overreach of lesser beings, the pridefulness of mere mortals. But hubris is a difficult concept to accept when mere mortals prove they’re able to do wonderful things with the information they’ve stolen, when God-like achievements are scattered among the wreckage.
Sin is easier to swallow somehow.
We’re broken, flawed, and often do the wrong thing…even when we know it’s the wrong thing.
That’s sin, and it’s everywhere you look.
The language of “sin” is insidious. It’s the language of a subtle power.
Sin is an inside job, a judgment about our intentions and our hidden, secret hearts. And there has always been a lot of darkness hidden in there. No question about it.
But the language of “hubris” is blunt. It’s the language of worldly power. It’s about knowing our place within the existing power structure, and keeping our mouths shut.
Insofar as knowledge is power, hubris is about holding the powerless in a state of ignorance. It’s about protecting the reign of the powerful—whether it’s the reign of God, Zeus, or the corporation.
Because knowledge, emancipated from power, cannot be controlled.
It can lead to violence, mayhem, chaos.
Or it can lead to scientific discovery. (Arrest Galileo!) Or a creative burst. (Ban Whitman!) Or an erotic awakening. (Imprison Wilde!) Or some other unpredictable turn of events.
Ultimately, it’s a revolt against the artificial limits that power imposes upon us.
Which is why the revolutionaries are our favorite devils. They help us separate the real from the artificial, the human from the machine of power.
The The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments is a pastiche of a poem about knowledge, sin, creativity, sex, revolution, and damnation. It’s a depiction of the many devils who make us human.
Each section is a different voice, a different literary style, and a glimpse into a different demonic moment…a fragment, a tessera in the mosaic of good and evil.
Like the beautiful cover image by Bill Travis (thank you Bill!), the fragments in this chapbook are dark and luminous, strong and vulnerable, naked and yearning.
And the poem…the poem itself is “another dark assault, foredoomed, upon/ the arbitrary glimmer of His light.”
You can find The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments at johntessitore.com.
Prometheus. Milton’s Satan. Eve.
They’re the ones who are warned that knowledge is reserved for the divine, and steal it anyway.
We have learned to label their acts as “hubris,” the overreach of lesser beings, the pridefulness of mere mortals. But hubris is a difficult concept to accept when mere mortals prove they’re able to do wonderful things with the information they’ve stolen, when God-like achievements are scattered among the wreckage.
Sin is easier to swallow somehow.
We’re broken, flawed, and often do the wrong thing…even when we know it’s the wrong thing.
That’s sin, and it’s everywhere you look.
The language of “sin” is insidious. It’s the language of a subtle power.
Sin is an inside job, a judgment about our intentions and our hidden, secret hearts. And there has always been a lot of darkness hidden in there. No question about it.
But the language of “hubris” is blunt. It’s the language of worldly power. It’s about knowing our place within the existing power structure, and keeping our mouths shut.
Insofar as knowledge is power, hubris is about holding the powerless in a state of ignorance. It’s about protecting the reign of the powerful—whether it’s the reign of God, Zeus, or the corporation.
Because knowledge, emancipated from power, cannot be controlled.
It can lead to violence, mayhem, chaos.
Or it can lead to scientific discovery. (Arrest Galileo!) Or a creative burst. (Ban Whitman!) Or an erotic awakening. (Imprison Wilde!) Or some other unpredictable turn of events.
Ultimately, it’s a revolt against the artificial limits that power imposes upon us.
Which is why the revolutionaries are our favorite devils. They help us separate the real from the artificial, the human from the machine of power.
The The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments is a pastiche of a poem about knowledge, sin, creativity, sex, revolution, and damnation. It’s a depiction of the many devils who make us human.
Each section is a different voice, a different literary style, and a glimpse into a different demonic moment…a fragment, a tessera in the mosaic of good and evil.
Like the beautiful cover image by Bill Travis (thank you Bill!), the fragments in this chapbook are dark and luminous, strong and vulnerable, naked and yearning.
And the poem…the poem itself is “another dark assault, foredoomed, upon/ the arbitrary glimmer of His light.”
You can find The Dark Ways Mysterious: Fragments at johntessitore.com.
February 22, 2024
A New Body Politics
My new pamphlet, On Self-Expression After the Revolution: Poems and Images, is about the fragility of humanity, and of humanism, at this particular moment in human history.
Humanism: the belief in the value of the human, the individual, over the religious, the digital, the institutional, the doctrinal, the national…and the corporate. Humanism is the foundation of my life and work—as a professional, once upon a time as a scholar and teacher, and as poet.
And I’m afraid it’s slipping away.
The evidence is all around us, in the pervasive feeling that we can’t change the world, can’t know the truth, can’t have a reasonable society based on responsible institutions…that we’re struggling against a demographic shift that will take generations to figure out. That the algorithms will replace us sooner than later.
What can we do?
Pragmatic optimists tell us to start small. The local. The nonprofit. The volunteer. To start outside of the traditional structures and institutions. In fact, we have to.
But I’m interested in a second possibility too, and one even closer to my heart as a desperate humanist in a dehumanizing world. As one of my poems in this collection says, ”I want to start with our bodies.”
That’s a loaded phrase in a post-Roe America, but so be it. If we can’t own our bodies, women and men too, if we can’t own ourselves, we’re fucked. And not in a good way.
Who and how we love. What we enjoy. What gives us pleasure, solace, comfort. How we define ourselves, present ourselves. What we call ourselves. What we consent to do and what we don’t consent to do. How we fuck. How we deal with “a passion so fierce and a lust so overwhelming.”
These must be our decisions alone.
As our culture continues to diminish the value of the individual in new and exciting ways, at the very least we need to preserve our dignity as human beings in human bodies.
It’s a modest ambition in the end, but we’re going to have to fight for it. It’s either the final frontier of our old lives, or the first frontier of our new lives.
Either way, we have no other choice.
Humanism: the belief in the value of the human, the individual, over the religious, the digital, the institutional, the doctrinal, the national…and the corporate. Humanism is the foundation of my life and work—as a professional, once upon a time as a scholar and teacher, and as poet.
And I’m afraid it’s slipping away.
The evidence is all around us, in the pervasive feeling that we can’t change the world, can’t know the truth, can’t have a reasonable society based on responsible institutions…that we’re struggling against a demographic shift that will take generations to figure out. That the algorithms will replace us sooner than later.
What can we do?
Pragmatic optimists tell us to start small. The local. The nonprofit. The volunteer. To start outside of the traditional structures and institutions. In fact, we have to.
But I’m interested in a second possibility too, and one even closer to my heart as a desperate humanist in a dehumanizing world. As one of my poems in this collection says, ”I want to start with our bodies.”
That’s a loaded phrase in a post-Roe America, but so be it. If we can’t own our bodies, women and men too, if we can’t own ourselves, we’re fucked. And not in a good way.
Who and how we love. What we enjoy. What gives us pleasure, solace, comfort. How we define ourselves, present ourselves. What we call ourselves. What we consent to do and what we don’t consent to do. How we fuck. How we deal with “a passion so fierce and a lust so overwhelming.”
These must be our decisions alone.
As our culture continues to diminish the value of the individual in new and exciting ways, at the very least we need to preserve our dignity as human beings in human bodies.
It’s a modest ambition in the end, but we’re going to have to fight for it. It’s either the final frontier of our old lives, or the first frontier of our new lives.
Either way, we have no other choice.
November 24, 2023
The Story-Poems of The Americans
For most of my life, I thought I would become a writer of fiction.Short stories actually. Like Hemingway. Or, later, like Carver.
I’ve only taken one creative writing class, ever, a life-changing short story seminar with Richard Ford (Carver’s friend!!). At that time, Ford was finishing a sequel to The Sportswriter, his acclaimed 1986 novel. By the end of the year, he had won a Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day and I was certain I would be his successor.
I even sent a story to a big literary magazine. One. Once. I received a hand-written response…while they couldn’t publish the one I sent, I should submit others very soon. I thought they said that to all the boys (they didn’t) so I didn’t follow up.
And that was it. I never submitted another short story to anyone. I still don’t know why.
I had a big New York agent for a while, repping one of my novel manuscripts all over New York City (a long story for a different day…it didn’t work out), but I never pushed another story.
When I published Sometimes I Still Pray: A Family Album earlier this year, a book of poems about my extended family that included a few prose vignettes as well as a full-blown short story, I had an epiphany: the impulse had never really left me. It just lay dormant for a while.
I also realized that I’d been writing stories, off and on, all along. Among the lyrical poems, formal poems, angry poems, self-loathing poems, love poems…I’d been writing story poems.
So I collected some story poems into a folder, wrote a slew of new ones, and let them organize themselves into…something. A group portrait…of America. In fact, all together, they reminded me of Robert Frank’s photographs in The Americans, the photobook he published in 1958. Poem snapshots.
Of course, poetry and photography do different things. But I felt that I had created something similar—a picture of America in a particular historical moment. And I had some actual photos laying around too, color landscapes that were nowhere near as good as Frank’s work (God no) but might be useful as counterpoint.
And that’s the origin of my new book, which I’ve decided to call The Americans: Poems and Images because Frank can’t own that title, nor can he own the impulse to bring this whole crazy country together between two covers. That seems to me like work we should all be doing, in our own ways.
Story-tellers all.
The Americans: Poems and Images is available in print and for Kindle.
I’ve only taken one creative writing class, ever, a life-changing short story seminar with Richard Ford (Carver’s friend!!). At that time, Ford was finishing a sequel to The Sportswriter, his acclaimed 1986 novel. By the end of the year, he had won a Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day and I was certain I would be his successor.
I even sent a story to a big literary magazine. One. Once. I received a hand-written response…while they couldn’t publish the one I sent, I should submit others very soon. I thought they said that to all the boys (they didn’t) so I didn’t follow up.
And that was it. I never submitted another short story to anyone. I still don’t know why.
I had a big New York agent for a while, repping one of my novel manuscripts all over New York City (a long story for a different day…it didn’t work out), but I never pushed another story.
When I published Sometimes I Still Pray: A Family Album earlier this year, a book of poems about my extended family that included a few prose vignettes as well as a full-blown short story, I had an epiphany: the impulse had never really left me. It just lay dormant for a while.
I also realized that I’d been writing stories, off and on, all along. Among the lyrical poems, formal poems, angry poems, self-loathing poems, love poems…I’d been writing story poems.
So I collected some story poems into a folder, wrote a slew of new ones, and let them organize themselves into…something. A group portrait…of America. In fact, all together, they reminded me of Robert Frank’s photographs in The Americans, the photobook he published in 1958. Poem snapshots.
Of course, poetry and photography do different things. But I felt that I had created something similar—a picture of America in a particular historical moment. And I had some actual photos laying around too, color landscapes that were nowhere near as good as Frank’s work (God no) but might be useful as counterpoint.
And that’s the origin of my new book, which I’ve decided to call The Americans: Poems and Images because Frank can’t own that title, nor can he own the impulse to bring this whole crazy country together between two covers. That seems to me like work we should all be doing, in our own ways.
Story-tellers all.
The Americans: Poems and Images is available in print and for Kindle.
August 16, 2023
“My City of Yesterday” and Creative Destiny
On August 21, I will release my next little book, My City of Yesterday: A Poem. This is a very special volume to me.
Like my other little books, this one is a single poem written in a variety of styles and voices. Unlike the others, this one plays with narrative: a hero’s journey…leaving home, getting lost, returning changed.
Echoes of Odysseus in the American suburbs.
And like a hero—albeit a flawed, old, grouchy one—I seem to have been chosen by the gods this time. As I was completing the poem, I had two conversations, in rapid succession, with artists I admire greatly, and both offered to collaborate.
My friend Pete Shorney (@peacockpete on Instagram) and I found ourselves discussing Homer one afternoon. Pete revealed that he had created a sequence of pictures based on The Odyssey and wondered if I could use them. Wait until you see how they light up the pages of My City of Yesterday: A Poem!
Just a day before that conversation, I was admiring the work of a different artist, Ted Randler (http://Randler.gallery). We were talking about water when Ted showed me the painting that is now the beautiful cover of this book. The painting is called “He Dreamt of Rousseau in the Moonlight,” and it inspired me to write one more section for the book…and I’m so glad I did.
I’m not exceptionally superstitious—possibly a little spiritual—but this book felt like it came together for a reason. I can’t wait for you to see it.
Like my other little books, this one is a single poem written in a variety of styles and voices. Unlike the others, this one plays with narrative: a hero’s journey…leaving home, getting lost, returning changed.
Echoes of Odysseus in the American suburbs.
And like a hero—albeit a flawed, old, grouchy one—I seem to have been chosen by the gods this time. As I was completing the poem, I had two conversations, in rapid succession, with artists I admire greatly, and both offered to collaborate.
My friend Pete Shorney (@peacockpete on Instagram) and I found ourselves discussing Homer one afternoon. Pete revealed that he had created a sequence of pictures based on The Odyssey and wondered if I could use them. Wait until you see how they light up the pages of My City of Yesterday: A Poem!
Just a day before that conversation, I was admiring the work of a different artist, Ted Randler (http://Randler.gallery). We were talking about water when Ted showed me the painting that is now the beautiful cover of this book. The painting is called “He Dreamt of Rousseau in the Moonlight,” and it inspired me to write one more section for the book…and I’m so glad I did.
I’m not exceptionally superstitious—possibly a little spiritual—but this book felt like it came together for a reason. I can’t wait for you to see it.
June 5, 2023
The Book My Father Wanted Me To Write
I think this is the book my father wanted me to write, or at least the start of it. And he wasn’t the only one.
He knew me pretty well. He knew I’d come around to it some day.
The rest of them must have sensed it from me, all those relatives from the five boroughs who wanted me to write it. (Four boroughs, really. Staten Island has always been and will always be a mystery to me.)
I don’t know what they sensed. The bookishness. The interest in history. In a good story. “You should write this down,” they’d say.
By “this” they meant their fading world.
Very few of them ever wrote anything for themselves. They were not a literary or artistic or musical or cinematic group. With very few exceptions, they were uninterested in…anything really, other than family. But I must have been wearing some kind of sign, even as a child, because I heard it all the time: “You should write this down.”
I heard it from my father most of all. He liked the idea that his suburban son could straddle cultures, could understand the foreign land he came from and to which we returned every weekend…the old, shitty, tragically unhip Brooklyn of my youth.
I’ve written this before: We were not “Italians” and had not been for three generations. The Irish nuns beat the Italy out of my grandparents, and none of us who followed could have survived a day in the Old World. We were Brooklyn Italians, which is its own thing.
And I was a Long Island kid who spent way too much time in Brooklyn, for many many reasons, good and bad. I also lived on an unusual block, even in my commuter town, a little street of identical houses with little backyards that was almost entirely populated by Brooklyn and Bronx Italians who, like us, did not even know a living Italian Italian anymore.
So I perfectly positioned to be the straddler, the note taker, the bridge—a walking, talking Belt Parkway. And I’ve been writing about these experiences, if only for myself, for well over three decades…and they have appeared, here and there, in my previous books.
And so…
One day I was thinking about Jean Toomer, the Harlem Renaissance writer whose greatest work, Cane , is a combination of short stories and poems. That’s not unusual for me. I often think about Toomer. But on that particular day I mentioned to the wisest person I know that I’d love to write the way Toomer wrote, in a mix of genres. And she said, as she often does, “So do it.”
And I thought…from a certain perspective, I’ve already done it for over three decades. I’ve written pages and pages of interrelated poems and fiction and nonfiction….all about my family.
Which is why this book, Sometimes I Still Pray (https://amzn.to/3N9REnh), came together in a flash and jumped the queue of upcoming Tessitore publications. Just in time for Father’s Day!
It is not my last word on the subject. Far from it. But it’s a start.
And it is dedicated to my father, who died four years ago knowing full well that I’d write a book like this some day. Just like he wanted me to.
He knew me pretty well. He knew I’d come around to it some day.
The rest of them must have sensed it from me, all those relatives from the five boroughs who wanted me to write it. (Four boroughs, really. Staten Island has always been and will always be a mystery to me.)
I don’t know what they sensed. The bookishness. The interest in history. In a good story. “You should write this down,” they’d say.
By “this” they meant their fading world.
Very few of them ever wrote anything for themselves. They were not a literary or artistic or musical or cinematic group. With very few exceptions, they were uninterested in…anything really, other than family. But I must have been wearing some kind of sign, even as a child, because I heard it all the time: “You should write this down.”
I heard it from my father most of all. He liked the idea that his suburban son could straddle cultures, could understand the foreign land he came from and to which we returned every weekend…the old, shitty, tragically unhip Brooklyn of my youth.
I’ve written this before: We were not “Italians” and had not been for three generations. The Irish nuns beat the Italy out of my grandparents, and none of us who followed could have survived a day in the Old World. We were Brooklyn Italians, which is its own thing.
And I was a Long Island kid who spent way too much time in Brooklyn, for many many reasons, good and bad. I also lived on an unusual block, even in my commuter town, a little street of identical houses with little backyards that was almost entirely populated by Brooklyn and Bronx Italians who, like us, did not even know a living Italian Italian anymore.
So I perfectly positioned to be the straddler, the note taker, the bridge—a walking, talking Belt Parkway. And I’ve been writing about these experiences, if only for myself, for well over three decades…and they have appeared, here and there, in my previous books.
And so…
One day I was thinking about Jean Toomer, the Harlem Renaissance writer whose greatest work, Cane , is a combination of short stories and poems. That’s not unusual for me. I often think about Toomer. But on that particular day I mentioned to the wisest person I know that I’d love to write the way Toomer wrote, in a mix of genres. And she said, as she often does, “So do it.”
And I thought…from a certain perspective, I’ve already done it for over three decades. I’ve written pages and pages of interrelated poems and fiction and nonfiction….all about my family.
Which is why this book, Sometimes I Still Pray (https://amzn.to/3N9REnh), came together in a flash and jumped the queue of upcoming Tessitore publications. Just in time for Father’s Day!
It is not my last word on the subject. Far from it. But it’s a start.
And it is dedicated to my father, who died four years ago knowing full well that I’d write a book like this some day. Just like he wanted me to.
May 4, 2023
My Chapbooks Are Not Albums But They Want To Be
This week, my very-talented, guitar-god little cousin invited me to an ensemble concert at Berklee College of Music. It was her final performance for a class, a graded exercise, and I was honored to be the only guest, a fly on the wall in this laboratory of great music.
I saw a Hendrix cover-band that leaned into Willie Dixon, a jazz-rock group (my cousin shredded Santana, Steely Dan AND Ornette Coleman), and a pop soul-soul group that opened with Sade. Heaven.
After one of the sets, a student drummer who had just played his heart out turned to his bassist and said, “We gotta talk about that set list.” He didn’t like something about it. I wish I knew what bothered him. I thought about it all the way home. I’m still so curious.
I love set lists, the art of creating relationships between disparate pieces, the opportunity to set a tone that gains meaning and depth from song to song.
I love set lists, which means I love albums. Old school records. Ten to twelve cuts. The arc and narrative of the best. The mad scientist obsessiveness of choosing the right fourth song on Side B. (“Fuck it! We need a rocker!”)
Abbey Road A Love Supreme Blood on the Tracks Kind of Blue Nebraska Violator Achtung Baby What’s Going On London Calling Innervisions Mule Variations Death of a Ladies Man Station to Station Darkness of the Edge of Town Tijuana Moods…
I thought about that drummer all the way home and I realized something. (It was a long drive home.) The album is the unit for my own work too…at least for my little books. I publish self-contained poems in journals. I’ve written novels. A novella. I love to write short stories. But my little chapbooks are like albums. That’s really the model in my head. Initially I thought of them as mix-tapes…which are a lot like albums and should follow the same rules (yes Nick Hornby)…but more often than not I find myself writing to the needs of the whole, deliberately echoing poetic fragments from section to section, and not just compiling previously-written material.
So maybe that’s what I am in the end: a frustrated guitarist with limited musical skills who is still trying to write a great record. I can’t decide if that’s a worthy or a futile goal for a middle aged man…but it may help explain my work.
Check out johntessitore.com and judge for yourself.
I saw a Hendrix cover-band that leaned into Willie Dixon, a jazz-rock group (my cousin shredded Santana, Steely Dan AND Ornette Coleman), and a pop soul-soul group that opened with Sade. Heaven.
After one of the sets, a student drummer who had just played his heart out turned to his bassist and said, “We gotta talk about that set list.” He didn’t like something about it. I wish I knew what bothered him. I thought about it all the way home. I’m still so curious.
I love set lists, the art of creating relationships between disparate pieces, the opportunity to set a tone that gains meaning and depth from song to song.
I love set lists, which means I love albums. Old school records. Ten to twelve cuts. The arc and narrative of the best. The mad scientist obsessiveness of choosing the right fourth song on Side B. (“Fuck it! We need a rocker!”)
Abbey Road A Love Supreme Blood on the Tracks Kind of Blue Nebraska Violator Achtung Baby What’s Going On London Calling Innervisions Mule Variations Death of a Ladies Man Station to Station Darkness of the Edge of Town Tijuana Moods…
I thought about that drummer all the way home and I realized something. (It was a long drive home.) The album is the unit for my own work too…at least for my little books. I publish self-contained poems in journals. I’ve written novels. A novella. I love to write short stories. But my little chapbooks are like albums. That’s really the model in my head. Initially I thought of them as mix-tapes…which are a lot like albums and should follow the same rules (yes Nick Hornby)…but more often than not I find myself writing to the needs of the whole, deliberately echoing poetic fragments from section to section, and not just compiling previously-written material.
So maybe that’s what I am in the end: a frustrated guitarist with limited musical skills who is still trying to write a great record. I can’t decide if that’s a worthy or a futile goal for a middle aged man…but it may help explain my work.
Check out johntessitore.com and judge for yourself.
March 29, 2023
Why I call it “For a minute there, it seemed like something was happening.”
Okay. Okay. I know. I was bridge-and-tunnel. I paid for a parking spot at the station in Babylon, had a monthly ticket for the Long Island Railroad. I read the Times and The New Yorker to and from work, as the air-conditioned cars squealed and flickered along the south shore.
At night, I’d leave the bars early and run down 7th drunk and exhausted so I didn’t miss my train.
I know.
But once I climbed out of Penn Station again the next morning, I was a magazine writer, in Manhattan. A pop culture writer. A member of the goddamn vanguard…figuring out how to type funny copy on all kinds of topics at light speed.
It was 1996 and we were trying to keep up with the internet, and the internet was fucking amazing.
Still is.
But in 1996, in Clinton’s America…the last superpower standing…in New York City…amazing.
I was doing what I’d always dreamed of doing. I was making money with my pen…er…keyboard.
Of course the internet was killing magazines as fast as we could print them. And we knew it. Also, I felt like I was slumming as a specialist in chicks-and-beer jokes, and would soon make the leap into graduate school to…what?…become a better writer? (Brilliant move, young John!)
But in that moment, the world felt like it was changing fast…and for the better.
And I’m pretty sure it was, until the attacks of September 11, 2001.
And that’s why I call this chapbook-length poem For a minute there, it seemed like something was happening.: A Poem.
At night, I’d leave the bars early and run down 7th drunk and exhausted so I didn’t miss my train.
I know.
But once I climbed out of Penn Station again the next morning, I was a magazine writer, in Manhattan. A pop culture writer. A member of the goddamn vanguard…figuring out how to type funny copy on all kinds of topics at light speed.
It was 1996 and we were trying to keep up with the internet, and the internet was fucking amazing.
Still is.
But in 1996, in Clinton’s America…the last superpower standing…in New York City…amazing.
I was doing what I’d always dreamed of doing. I was making money with my pen…er…keyboard.
Of course the internet was killing magazines as fast as we could print them. And we knew it. Also, I felt like I was slumming as a specialist in chicks-and-beer jokes, and would soon make the leap into graduate school to…what?…become a better writer? (Brilliant move, young John!)
But in that moment, the world felt like it was changing fast…and for the better.
And I’m pretty sure it was, until the attacks of September 11, 2001.
And that’s why I call this chapbook-length poem For a minute there, it seemed like something was happening.: A Poem.
