MEDI(T)ATIONS by Chris Stroffolino

Chris Stroffolino is not a poetry know-it-all — he's a consider-and-question-it-all (and then take that all and make it beautiful). Even the title of this collection suggests a space for shared wonderings: Medi(t)ations. For me, the most beautiful poem here is "Branches Eager for Leaves to Help them Droop," which asks a series of well-considered questions: "Can you hide your heart up & on your sleeve? . . . Are you most honest when you leave? . . . & if I desecrate what can’t be spoken, / a spirit before meaning that you’ve woken / a distant kind of love that can’t be broken, / does this mean we have to die alone?" In so many of these new poems, Stroffolino speaks to, for, and as us all: an act of expedient and desperately necessary compassion.
 
—Sharon Mesmer


In Chris Stroffolino’s most recent full-length collection, MEDI(T)ATIONS, the reader is offered a series of poems that skillfully delve into socio-cultural critique and deep contemplation. The book presents intimate meditations on relationships, poetic explorations of disability and embodiment, and considerations of mortality and transformation. Multiple references to music and composition as well as Stroffolino’s experiences as a musician (he plays trumpet and piano) serve as a compelling throughline in this collection. In the tender poem “massage music teacher,” he writes, “On the table, Nicole works/ the lumbar/hip pain/ and the cervical neck pain—to get them talking to each other/ like a kickdrum to a snare/ roots & branches, fruit feet.” Surreal phrasings, unexpected juxtapositions, and word play abound. In “Color Me Impressed,” he writes, “sprouting from an avocado compost pile/ on the shores of algae-covered lake kale / where kittens play bed bugs with lightning legs/ as bottomless and musical and beautiful as you…” To read Chris Stroffolino’s generous and inventive MEDI(T)ATIONS is to be transformed.

—Maw Shein Win


In Med(i)tations, Chris Stroffolino summons spirits who dance on the “wall between the kitchen/and the piano room some call living.” Stroffolino has the unparalleled ability, as our contemporary troubadour, to create sociopolitical universes from palettes of song, dance, pigment, and shade. Imbued with fervor, these gems confront the instabilities that cloud our days, drawing on humor, spleen, and heaps of tenderness. Be it rock, jazz, blues, crooning, or cackling, the musics found here are always full of heart. 

—Martine Bellen


Chris Stroffolino’s strophes are as masterful and dexterous as ever in Medi(t)ations, its lyrics clear-eyed as it explores the human particulars of one poet’s experience. Convalescing and reaching for chords, Stroffolino expresses solidarity with us just when we need help navigating through our collective dystopia. Medi(t)ations is cause for celebration.

—Daniel Nester


Chris Stroffolino has published 6 previous books of poetry, most of which are out of print, including Speculative Primitive (2005), Stealer’s Wheel (1999), and Light as A Fetter (1997). Most recently Crisis Chronicles publishedDrinking from What I Once Wore (2018). A book of prose reminiscences at the intersection of the personal and cultural, Death of a Selfish Altruist, was published by Iniquity Press in 2017. RadioSurvivor.org published his history of the corporate takeover of radio, Radio Orphan, in sequential form, in 2012. He co-authored a study of Shakespeare’s 12thNight with David Rosenthal (IDG Books, 2001). Spuyten Duyvil has published 2 collections of essays on mostly contemporary poetry, Spin Cycle (2001), and In The Here There (2024).

He has released 4 albums of songs under his own name, including Single-Sided Doubles (2009), Predator Drone (2011), The Griffith Park Sessions (2014), and 12 Songs of Goodbye, and 1 Song of Hello. (2019). Precariously, he has taught Critical Thinking, and, sometimes, Creative Writing & Lit, at Laney College in Oakland since 2008, where he lives in a closet with no heat but access to piano in a hallway.


Book Information:

· Paperback: 114 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-498-7

$18