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Millennial Teeth
Both bleak and bewildering, Millennial Teeth, the visceral new collection by poet Dan Albergotti, maps a contradictory journey filled with longing and dread, cynicism and hope. A heady mix of traditional forms and more experimental verse, Albergotti’s volume lures readers inexorably into the poet’s obsessions with mystery, doubt, ephemerality, and silence.
The poetry in Millennial Teeth will feel both refreshingly new and strangely familiar to Albergotti’s audience. Some poems pay direct tribute to such literary luminaries as Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin, while others give nods to icons of pop culture, from Radiohead to Roman Polanski. The narrator muses on the resurrection of Christina the Astonishing, the works of Coleridge, and the mindless duties of minor players in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Yet these familiar faces are not our friends; they are juxtaposed with the heartbreaking apocalypses, both natural and man-made, that have plagued the world since the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. A reluctant witness to such events, the narrator of these poems attempts to navigate his own personal crises, including the mental illness and dementia of loved ones and the inability to connect with others, from the darkness of a personal orbit far from the sun. As he vehemently rejects the notions of religious succor, immortality, and the passive acceptance of fate, he simultaneously yearns to be proven wrong. Yet despite his trials, Albergotti’s narrator maintains a gallows humor and wry insight that balance his despair.
A riveting exploration of the all-too-human struggle between faith and doubt, skepticism and obsession, Millennial Teeth has both heart and bite in plenty.
The poetry in Millennial Teeth will feel both refreshingly new and strangely familiar to Albergotti’s audience. Some poems pay direct tribute to such literary luminaries as Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin, while others give nods to icons of pop culture, from Radiohead to Roman Polanski. The narrator muses on the resurrection of Christina the Astonishing, the works of Coleridge, and the mindless duties of minor players in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Yet these familiar faces are not our friends; they are juxtaposed with the heartbreaking apocalypses, both natural and man-made, that have plagued the world since the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. A reluctant witness to such events, the narrator of these poems attempts to navigate his own personal crises, including the mental illness and dementia of loved ones and the inability to connect with others, from the darkness of a personal orbit far from the sun. As he vehemently rejects the notions of religious succor, immortality, and the passive acceptance of fate, he simultaneously yearns to be proven wrong. Yet despite his trials, Albergotti’s narrator maintains a gallows humor and wry insight that balance his despair.
A riveting exploration of the all-too-human struggle between faith and doubt, skepticism and obsession, Millennial Teeth has both heart and bite in plenty.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
1 person is currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Dan Albergotti
10 books15 followers
Links
Dan Albergotti poems at From the Fishouse (audio)
Dan Albergotti on The Writer's Almanac (audio)
Bio
Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2008, his poem “What They’re Doing” was selected for Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses. A graduate of the MFA program at UNC Greensboro and former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, Albergotti currently teaches creative writing and literature courses and edits the online journal Waccamaw at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC.
Dan Albergotti poems at From the Fishouse (audio)
Dan Albergotti on The Writer's Almanac (audio)
Bio
Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2008, his poem “What They’re Doing” was selected for Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses. A graduate of the MFA program at UNC Greensboro and former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, Albergotti currently teaches creative writing and literature courses and edits the online journal Waccamaw at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 16, 2023
A good poem will do more to expand your capacity for empathy and goodness than most church services will. But now I'm ranting--forgive me. Bottom line: Please don't call me a religious poet, because I ain't one.
Interview with Dan Albergotti in Town Creek Poetry, Fall 2008
What They're Doing
They're bulldozing the cheap apartments
where the young Chinese couple were slaughtered
on Veterans Day. They're hauling away broken,
blood-stained bricks. They're making business decisions.
They're making children who will piss in the river
and ride their new bicycles down the center of the street
on Christmas day, grinning, baring sharp little teeth.
They're taking children to church and singing hymns.
They're becoming Christian soldiers, marching as to war.
They're carrying a cross before them like a scythe.
They're entering holy cities in armored personnel carriers.
They're accomplishing missions, declaring victory,
saying amen, amen, meaning so be it, so be it. And so it is.
Dan Albergotti's Millennial Teeth has bite: He scrutinizes religious hypocrisy, the racist views of his father, and his inability to live up to his own expectations and responsibilities. He employs formal poetic structures and is as apt to rhyme his verse as not. He has this odd 14 line poetic structure he uses several times whose words resemble a sort of pennant on the page: It's rhyme scheme is some variation of AABBCCDDEEFFGG and the syllabic count starts at two syllables and then increases by two syllables until reaching a length of fourteen on lines 7 and 8--then decreasing by two back down to two. For example:
Aubade
The fuck-
ing sun has struck
its light upon the blinds,
and my nostalgic dream unwinds,
and we're no longer fucking, and I'm sad.
I wake alone. You've gone back to the Dunciad.
To say we used to fuck is not wholly true. At least I
tried to make love, to blend my soul with yours, and with you fly--
like doves. To me, at least, it wasn't just a trick.
But you left. And now any Tom or Dick
seems good enough for you. I lie
this dawn, dreaming what I
most want to do:
fuck you.
I'm sorry for choosing this example, but I wanted to clarify Albergotti's poetry. Notice why he had to explain to the journalist how he fears being mistaken for "a religious poet." Notice his clever word play in the final line. Notice his tendency to blazon his Ph.D in English literature: His lover has left him for Alexander Pope's verse? Really?
There's merit within this work, but a startling lack of consistency. Albergotti is making poetry out of his shitty life, but most of the time rather than universal poetic truths what we have are really just cleverly arranged whining and frustration. There's enough substance here to warrant a reading, but someone needs to help Albergotti focus more on his poetry, not his disappointments with himself and humanity.
Interview with Dan Albergotti in Town Creek Poetry, Fall 2008
What They're Doing
They're bulldozing the cheap apartments
where the young Chinese couple were slaughtered
on Veterans Day. They're hauling away broken,
blood-stained bricks. They're making business decisions.
They're making children who will piss in the river
and ride their new bicycles down the center of the street
on Christmas day, grinning, baring sharp little teeth.
They're taking children to church and singing hymns.
They're becoming Christian soldiers, marching as to war.
They're carrying a cross before them like a scythe.
They're entering holy cities in armored personnel carriers.
They're accomplishing missions, declaring victory,
saying amen, amen, meaning so be it, so be it. And so it is.
Dan Albergotti's Millennial Teeth has bite: He scrutinizes religious hypocrisy, the racist views of his father, and his inability to live up to his own expectations and responsibilities. He employs formal poetic structures and is as apt to rhyme his verse as not. He has this odd 14 line poetic structure he uses several times whose words resemble a sort of pennant on the page: It's rhyme scheme is some variation of AABBCCDDEEFFGG and the syllabic count starts at two syllables and then increases by two syllables until reaching a length of fourteen on lines 7 and 8--then decreasing by two back down to two. For example:
Aubade
The fuck-
ing sun has struck
its light upon the blinds,
and my nostalgic dream unwinds,
and we're no longer fucking, and I'm sad.
I wake alone. You've gone back to the Dunciad.
To say we used to fuck is not wholly true. At least I
tried to make love, to blend my soul with yours, and with you fly--
like doves. To me, at least, it wasn't just a trick.
But you left. And now any Tom or Dick
seems good enough for you. I lie
this dawn, dreaming what I
most want to do:
fuck you.
I'm sorry for choosing this example, but I wanted to clarify Albergotti's poetry. Notice why he had to explain to the journalist how he fears being mistaken for "a religious poet." Notice his clever word play in the final line. Notice his tendency to blazon his Ph.D in English literature: His lover has left him for Alexander Pope's verse? Really?
There's merit within this work, but a startling lack of consistency. Albergotti is making poetry out of his shitty life, but most of the time rather than universal poetic truths what we have are really just cleverly arranged whining and frustration. There's enough substance here to warrant a reading, but someone needs to help Albergotti focus more on his poetry, not his disappointments with himself and humanity.
August 1, 2014
Milennial Teeth speaks haugthingly of times when we cry out for more, for meaning and our answer is only silence. Cries of the souls find voice in these poems.
My copy came through Goodreads First Reads program.
My copy came through Goodreads First Reads program.
April 21, 2025
Well worth the read, many of the pieces here are thoughtful and pointed, in the best ways. A minor complaint that some feel a bit dated, older than the book's copyright of 2014. 9/11 looms here, and there are plenty of things that feel more terrible now.
August 15, 2025
A dark but beautiful and thought-provoking collection.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews