Poetry News and Contact Information for Gabriel Spera

Gabriel Spera is the author of The Standing Wave published by Harper Collins (New York). Selected for the 2002 National Poetry Series, the book also received the 2004 Literary Book Award for Poetry from PEN USA-West. A few representative poems by Gabriel Spera can be found online:

Grubbing, originally published in Roger.
Masterful, originally published in Cimarron Review.
Cabbageworm, originally published in Dogwood.
At the Medical Waxworks, Bologna, originally published in Carolina Quarterly (link seems to be down).
Leopard, originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review.
Idle Hands, originally published in Doubletake magazine.
In a Field Outside the Town, originally published in Poetry, reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2000.
The Mission Olive, originally published in Southern Review.

Gabriel Spera can be reached at gspera@cheerful.com.

Reviews

Reviews of The Standing Wave can be found in the following publications:

The Missouri Review (26:3). "...tiptoes a fine line, maintaining a balance between formalism and free verse, traditional tropes and verbal originality....the result is often spectacular."

Poetry, Feb. 2004. "There is some formal imagination on display in these poems, and the images are ... vividly evoked."

The Raleigh News & Observer, Sunday, Aug. 31 2003. "It distinguishes itself with intelligence, wit, impeccable technique and openness, and it has real substance to impart."

The Standing Wave is the winner of the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary Book Award for Poetry. From the judges' statement:

The Standing Wave, by Gabriel Spera, the winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Poetry, is a book that demanded our attention for the emotional range of the poems and for the maturity of craft exhibited there. In short, this book is extraordinary. Spera reminds us of Elizabeth Bishop with poems so packed with metaphor we seem in 2004 almost to have forgotten how to read them. Metaphor is suspect in these days of flat statement and moral outrage, but Spera doesn't care, and reading this book we remember that we love metaphor, love the old ways of speaking, not only in an individual voice but in the collective voice of our conscience. And when we read these poems, we know why poetry has power to reach across time and space. Never totally personal, the first poems force us to ask our old questions about the nature of God—Yahweh, Buddha, Christ—and the devil in all the usual guises of human greed, violence, and indifference.
The voice of the book, always cool, is ironic, witty, aloof, compassionate, disgusted, and human by turns. Finally, though, the reason this book is the first choice of the judging panel is not only Spera's engagement with the big questions, but also that he asks them brilliantly and exhibits his willingness to provide answers to serious and troubling issues of the day, especially his unforgettable and essential "The Suicide Bombers" and "In a Field Outside the Town."
The book's coda, the final poems, are personal meditations on time and loss and the evocation of what is precious in an individual's life. Readers will find in this collection of poems more than one reason to keep the book close by, to reread and sit with these wonderful and compelling jewels of language.

Upcoming Readings

(none scheduled)

News

Gabriel Spera recently received a 2009 Literature Fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

New poems forthcoming in Prairie Schooner (issue TBA).
New poems forthcoming in the premier issue of Cavalier (October 2009).

Notes

For a complete list of publications, see curriculum vitae.

To arrange a reading, please write to gspera@cheerful.com.