If & When We Wake

by Francis Daulerio, Scott Hutchison (Illustrator)

If & When We Wake is the product of winters and springs. It has been buried under snowpack, thawed, cultivated, scorched by the sun, and buried yet again. The result is a book of poetry and art that shines light on the desperation, helplessness, and loss that everyone feels, and tries to find the beauty of acceptance and growth. It examines the necessity of finding meaning in life after experiencing death.

Genres: Poetry, Book Club

148 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 8, 2015

About the author

Francis Daulerio is a poet and teacher from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University in 2014 before releasing If & When We Wake (Unsolicited Press 2015) and Please Plant This Book (The Head & The Hand Press 2018), both with illustrations by Scottish artist, Scott Hutchison. Francis has also released All Is Not Lost, a collaborative vinyl EP of poetry-infused music to benefit the Tiny Changes charity organization, and With a Difference (Trident Boulder 2020), a split book of ‘covers’ with Philadelphia author Nick Gregorio. His most recent collection, Joy, was released in 2022 by Unsolicited press.

Francis is a mental health awareness advocate, and has performed across the United States and abroad to raise money for suicide prevention.

He lives in the woods with his wife and children. He finds a good bit of joy there.

"Francis Daulerio is a masterful poet, but more so, a callus-handed gardener, slowly peeling back the layers of the simple and often unseen beauty of the human experience." - Gregory Alan Isakov

Reviews

[William McCall · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only criticism is that the poems are consistently too brief, when several would benefit from elaboration.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like poetry, it's cerebral and thought-provoking. Some over my head, some spoke right through me. I appreciate the thought behind it. The delicate art scribbled throughout the pages added a vision to ideas richly more complicated than my everyday thinking.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars simply for the drawings from Scott Hutchison, former singer of my favorite band. But the poems themselves are two stars--frankly, as someone else said here, there are often too short. And I can get behind short poems, but there needs to be something to grab onto, and for these poems there is just not enough substance in the majority of them. The enjambments were frequent and sometimes not needed, as though added for dramatic effect but there wasn't any drama to it. It felt similar to Rupi Kaur, who writes one sentence but splits it up into 15 enjambments and then calls it *poetry* (yeah not a fan). Some of the poems also just seemed like a thought that without any context of the writers life / without being the writer himself, I wouldn't ever understand ("The Migration, For Sophie" is an example).

Lastly, whoever put this book together and set it on the page baffles me. 90% of the time the poems are only on the right side of the page, but every once in a blue moon (I'd say every few pages, but these books also doesn't even have any page numbers for some odd reason *shrug*) it's on the left side. And on the rare occasion that a poem goes on to two pages or more, I'm so unprepared for it because the bottom third of the page is always blank. It's so blank that it seems the poem is done, then I turned the page and there was more of the poem I had been reading. Some of the ones that were two pages could have fit on one page if they'd just not included about 20 returns in between pages. And then the way they put the illustrations often should have been flipped so that the poem would be on the left and then the illustration on the right, because often the illustration would only make sense after reading the poem -- so have us read that first, then look at the image...not the other way around like it is presented to us. One particular case of this was the "Such a fucked way to go" which was an image on the left and then gave away the last line of the poem to the right of it, making the "reveal" of that line in the poem less impactful.

For something I read in only 30 minutes, I've spent probably as much time writing this review frustrated at the poor design and lack of meaningful poems. But there are a few in there that did grab me. Not a complete waste of time, but I won't be coming back to any more of Daulerio's work or looking for anything from this publisher again.

[Violet Raven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiet
Contemplative
Sad and serene
In equal measure
A connection across continents
Hope as well as heartache

In Scott's words, which do not appear here but are communicated by his illustrations, I feel this piece of collaboration to "carry a decadent flame way into the night and beyond the grave."

Rest in poetry.

[Daniel DiFranco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant minimalist poems that punch you in the gut at times. Daulerio has a knack for metaphor and for sneaking poetry out of seemingly ordinary things—but what we're left with is more than the ordinary.

[Chris Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will continue to return to this.

[Griffin Deutsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

thanks turkeygirl

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poems that, to me, summed up grief and love perfectly

[David Deignan]

Some beautiful poems and meditations on life, but it's very sparse.

[Rebekah Suwak-Worsham · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a beautiful little collection of short poems

I never wanted this book to end! Each poem is such a delight! I can’t wait to discuss this with my book club.

[Kate Jolley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple collection - nothing fancy but incredibly heartfelt. It’s one to return to.

[Ciara · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're here for awhile. Then we're not.

[Unsolicited Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered what a fiddlehead feels when it pushes itself up through the sun to reach the warm embrace of the sun? Francis Daulerio's poetry collection will. Daulerio's poetry delicately presses through the soil and is born right before your eyes, each page turn another reach for warmth. I am impressed and awed by this book.