The Lama's English Lessons

Poetry. In this collection, selected by Joseph Millar as the winner of the Three Candles First Book Prize, Tony Trigilio deftly weaves cultural references as varied as Hawaii Five-O and Lee Harvey Oswald into a stunning collection that forces us to re-evaluate our own lives. Whether he's describing a ballgame on the radio or an auto-responder from the White House, we know we are in capable hands. "In THE LAMA'S ENGLISH LESSONS, Trigilio navigates a postmodern American urbanscape...
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Poetry. In this collection, selected by Joseph Millar as the winner of the Three Candles First Book Prize, Tony Trigilio deftly weaves cultural references as varied as Hawaii Five-O and Lee Harvey Oswald into a stunning collection that forces us to re-evaluate our own lives. Whether he's describing a ballgame on the radio or an auto-responder from the White House, we know we are in capable hands. "In THE LAMA'S ENGLISH LESSONS, Trigilio navigates a postmodern American urbanscape searching for grace. He calmly chronicles the way the natural and the mechanical now interpenetrate, taking on each other's characteristics, missions: 'The cabs stupefied / at the airport like cattle.' In his quest he encounters the homeless, baseball, TV, special prosecutors, jazz, Lee Harvey Oswald, the proclamations of newscasters and ex-presidents, and the legacies of WWII and Vietnam. He discovers odd moments of humor and transcendence in the mass transit, multi tasking madness we're trapped, in a confluence of personal and public histories, and manages to float above it all, maintaining perfect spiritual equilibrium, like strains of Buddhist music"—Amy Gerstler.