Inside the Walls of My Own House: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood) Book 2

by Tony Trigilio

“‘Dark Shadows made me believe // in a world of paranormal certainty,’ and after you read this book, you will too. Tony Trigilio writes a world in which there is no separation between his dailiness and the fictional realm of Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera he clearly loves, even with its daily rash of continuity errors, bad makeup, flubbed lines, and inherent camp, a show that has possessed him since he first watched it as a child with his mother. This book is haunted—how could it not be?—not only by Barnabas Collins, the doddering vampire who enfolds and catalyzes the show’s time-traveling retreat to 1795 New England and back to its present, but also James Earl Ray, the Boston Marathon bombings, and, most intensely, Trigilio’s mother, who emerges in this book as a complex figure worthy of the multivolume poem the poet has undertaken, even if it may well bury him alive” (Nick Twemlow). Praise for Book 1 of The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood) “The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood) feels meditative, organic, and weighty far beyond what one would anticipate from a poem about a blooper-ridden ’60s TV show” (Rain Taxi). “By turns comic and heartrending, lyric and absurd, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood) collages elements from dreams, memories, and pop-culture into a strangely compelling portrait of the little boy who turned into Tony Trigilio” (Maggie Millner, ZYZZYVA). “I think [Trigilio] is one of the most versatile writers in the U.S. today. He’s stretching not only poetry, but narrative as well. . . . You never know what he’ll do next” (Joseph Harrington).

152 pages, Paperback

Published September 6, 2016

About the author

Tony Trigilio is the author and editor of seventeen books, including, most recently, The Punishment Book (BlazeVOX [books], 2024), the fourth installment in his multivolume poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood); Craft: A Memoir (Marsh Hawk Press, 2023); and Proof Something Happened, selected by Susan Howe as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (2021). A volume of his selected poems, Fuera del Taller del Cosmos, was published in Guatemala in 2018 by Editorial Poe (translated by Bony Hernández). His books of poetry also include Ghosts of the Upper Floor (BlazeVOX, 2019), White Noise (Apostrophe Books, 2013), and Historic Diary (BlazeVOX, 2011), among others. He is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta Press, 2014; new edition forthcoming, 2025, from BlazeVOX) and Dispatches from the Body Politic: Interviews with Jan Beatty, Meg Day, and Douglas Kearney (Essay Press, 2016). Trigilio is the author of the critical monographs Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics (second edition released in paperback by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012) and "Strange Prophecies Anew" (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). With Erik Mortenson, he co-edited the essay collection The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation (Clemson University Press / Liverpool University Press, 2023); and with Tim Prchal, he co-edited the literature anthology Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

His poems have been anthologized widely, including The Best American Poetry (ed. Elaine Equi; Scribner, 2023); Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry (After Hours Press, 2022); The Eloquent Poem (Persea Books, 2019); The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017); Poems Dead and Undead (Knopf/Everyman's Library, 2014); Obsessions: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (Dartmouth College Press, 2014); The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012); A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press, 2012); and Villanelles (Knopf/Everyman's Library, 2012), among others. His critical essays have appeared in the collections Reconstructing the Beats (ed. Jennie Skerl; Palgrave/MacMillan, 2004) and Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation (Rutgers University Press, 2002). His articles and book reviews have appeared in journals such as American Literature, Another Chicago Magazine, Boston Review, The Journal of Beat Studies, Modern Language Studies, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, The William Carlos Williams Review, and others.

Trigilio co-founded the poetry journal Court Green in 2004, and was an associate editor for Tupelo Quarterly from 2017-2021. He is Poetry Editor and Nonfiction Co-Editor of Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose. A past recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, he lives in Chicago.

Reviews

[Jayme Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review:

https://heavyfeatherreview.com/2017/0...