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Open Books: Event Archive
October 16, 2005 03:00 PM
MICHAEL BONACCI & TIMOTHY KELLY
These gentlemen are the winners of the Floating Bridge Press Poetry
Chapbook Award for 2004 and 2005 respectively. Mr. Bonacci's book, The
Former St. Christopher, concerns his entering, then leaving, the priesthood
to enter into a relationship. The richly lyrical poems evoke the complex
emotions of this act. His lover took ill, so that "illness. set up
housekeeping / like a third roommate." The poems then deal with, in a sweet
and even-tempered way, the death of his lover and his life after that loss.
Toccata & Fugue is the title of Mr. Kelly's winning volume. He is a
practicing physical therapist, and his awareness of the workings of the body
are everywhere evident in the book. Mr. Kelly exercises a scientific eye and
a love of language. The resulting poems point directly to the complexities
of the body and the impact of touch, the clinical and the sensual. From his
poem "Handling Necks"--"Bring poems / to weddings,. / But bring touch to
newborns, touch to the bewildered.."
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