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When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double
Who wouldn't want a metaphorical stunt double to take the perilous fall that comes with the pain of loss or profound disappointment? The poems in When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double by Diane DeCillis consider resourceful ways in which we become our own stunt double and explore through a poet's eyes the anatomy of the mind, body, and soul.
Although many of these poems investigate loss and heartbreak, this book is not about being a victim. It's about how we not only survive our most challenging moments but how we thrive in spite of them. These are poems about all of the ways our hearts both help us and betray us during major life dealing with divorce, the death of a loved one, separation from those closest to you, or with the agonizing experience of memory loss. The speaker appreciatively observes "how hard the muscle has worked / lifting and lowering the weight of love and sorrow." DeCillis writes that loss can feel like your heart is limping "like a wounded animal / before you sink into the shelter of your own shadow." But with every loss in these poems comes rebirth―a beautiful, sensory-rich wildflower garden of new breaths and experiences. The character of the heart is depicted as a piece of human anatomy at the same time it's portrayed as its own world; an entire planet. DeCillis personifies the mitral, aortic, and pulmonary valves, describing our bodies as blooming with vegetation, a recursive image of living things thriving inside living things.
When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double takes us on a journey of what it means to be fully human. It touches upon the gifts we find in humor, nature, art, food, and how we celebrate the beauty of our scars. These are love to others, to the self, to the body. DeCillis makes it clear that wounds need attention and care, but that loss always strengthens us. This collection will be admired by poetry lovers of all kinds, and those who enjoy modern and corporeal love poems.
Although many of these poems investigate loss and heartbreak, this book is not about being a victim. It's about how we not only survive our most challenging moments but how we thrive in spite of them. These are poems about all of the ways our hearts both help us and betray us during major life dealing with divorce, the death of a loved one, separation from those closest to you, or with the agonizing experience of memory loss. The speaker appreciatively observes "how hard the muscle has worked / lifting and lowering the weight of love and sorrow." DeCillis writes that loss can feel like your heart is limping "like a wounded animal / before you sink into the shelter of your own shadow." But with every loss in these poems comes rebirth―a beautiful, sensory-rich wildflower garden of new breaths and experiences. The character of the heart is depicted as a piece of human anatomy at the same time it's portrayed as its own world; an entire planet. DeCillis personifies the mitral, aortic, and pulmonary valves, describing our bodies as blooming with vegetation, a recursive image of living things thriving inside living things.
When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double takes us on a journey of what it means to be fully human. It touches upon the gifts we find in humor, nature, art, food, and how we celebrate the beauty of our scars. These are love to others, to the self, to the body. DeCillis makes it clear that wounds need attention and care, but that loss always strengthens us. This collection will be admired by poetry lovers of all kinds, and those who enjoy modern and corporeal love poems.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2021
10 people want to read
About the author
Diane Decillis
3 books7 followersAfter closing her award-winning gallery of thirty-three years, Detroit native Diane DeCillis found herself knee-deep in her second career as an author. Before she could blink, her premier poetry collection, Strings Attached, was named a 2015 Michigan Notable Book. It is also the winner of the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Poetry, as well as a finalist for the Indie Fab Award for Poetry. Even the cover design for Strings Attached has been recognized as one of the very best at the 2015 Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket and Journal Show.
(from http://dianedecillis.com/about/)
(from http://dianedecillis.com/about/)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2021
A wonderful new book from a Detroit poet. As the title alone indicates these poems have both a deep sadness to them but also a wry, even humorous remove. Here are a few words I wrote when i first read this:
When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double is filled with the local references one would hope for from a writer who has lived in greater Detroit for her entire life. But she has a wide ranging imagination. DeCillis can call up musical references from rock to the classical tradition. Her reading will move through all of literature, from Lorca to Kay Ryan to Bob Dylan. She can reference her own experience as a psychologist or as the owner of an art gallery. She knows the names for bones and muscles and will bring them into her poems. She can find the improbable connections, those wild imaginative associations that have shaped so much of contemporary poetry, or she can choose to write a poem in the voice of a dog! Her own Lebanese heritage adds a unique element. She has a good working knowledge of the received forms and meters of English verse, and uses them with subtlety and skill.
Here is just the first stanza of one of her "ars poetica" "A Taste for Duende":
Lien in the cool night grass
that bends to your will and tilt
toward the flash and speck, where planets
tease and nymphs ignite Lorca's
secret and shuddering, his
ghost and glimmer.
When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double is filled with the local references one would hope for from a writer who has lived in greater Detroit for her entire life. But she has a wide ranging imagination. DeCillis can call up musical references from rock to the classical tradition. Her reading will move through all of literature, from Lorca to Kay Ryan to Bob Dylan. She can reference her own experience as a psychologist or as the owner of an art gallery. She knows the names for bones and muscles and will bring them into her poems. She can find the improbable connections, those wild imaginative associations that have shaped so much of contemporary poetry, or she can choose to write a poem in the voice of a dog! Her own Lebanese heritage adds a unique element. She has a good working knowledge of the received forms and meters of English verse, and uses them with subtlety and skill.
Here is just the first stanza of one of her "ars poetica" "A Taste for Duende":
Lien in the cool night grass
that bends to your will and tilt
toward the flash and speck, where planets
tease and nymphs ignite Lorca's
secret and shuddering, his
ghost and glimmer.
July 14, 2021
Diane DeCillis set a heavy task for herself in her second poetry collection, When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double. After all, her first collection, Strings Attached, was stunning in ways only a book of poetry can be: the expert blend of form and content, the innovative and satisfying imagery, and the equally deft seduction of the heart and mind. I was both impressed and delighted to see that DeCillis has once again delivered a tour de force, this time turning her attention to the impersonators, the imposters, the stunt doubles. Though sweets are in reality "the apocalypse of the body proper" and chair legs are bars of a fanciful birdcage, DeCillis reminds us that "the thorns still perfume the air in every room that held your breath." DeCillis is an author at the height of her heart and craft, and this is a book to be read and reread.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews