Poetry review – LAMP OF WHISPERS: Charles Rammelkamp discusses a new volume of prose poems by David Giannini
Lamp of Whispers
David Giannini
Dos Madres Press, 2026
$25.00, 230 pages
ISBN: 978-1-962847-49-0
David Giannini’s Thoreauvian meditations range from observations about the lives of cats (“Mina & Maya,” “Mina & Plato”), through “Being” in its widest sense (“The Hairless Way of Being”) to simple physical being (“M.R.I.,” a reflection on his arm – “My left arm is an idiot.”). Then again they range from winter (“Love on Ice,” “A Sense of Eternity in Winter”) via literature and art (“The Artist,” “Every Poet’s an Amateur,” “Rereading Old Masters and Translations”) to the vicissitudes and the beauty of the natural world (“The Raccoons Are Setting Out,” “The Work in Every Season Now,” “After Another Big Rain”). For really, the “prosepoems” (Giannini’s preferred spelling / description of the selections in Lamp of Whispers) are introspective contemplations of himself and the world around him in the manner of that other New England philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. The book is a “new and selected” compilation, with pieces from eight previous volumes dating back a decade to 2015’s Span of Thread as well as over forty new selections.
David Giannini’s prosepoems are justified blocks of writing, ‘vertical pieces, many of them taller than they are wide,’ as he explains in his introductory note. Though many are divided into paragraphs, others – “Solitary,” “Thinking of Leo Again,” “Construction Site,” “No Regrets,” “Protest,” “Transplant,” and “Squeeze-Box” among them – present themselves as single blocks of words on a page. But though the text is almost reassuringly presented in this discursive fashion, like an argument proceeding by developed reasoning (as Giannini further describes his prosepoems), they are ‘often nonlinear and work by associative and sometimes also symbolic interactions.’ In other words, they are more often than not intuitive rather than logical.
Indeed, one of the book’s epigraphs is from Albert Einstein: ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.’
The difficulty for the reviewer is to summarize the one hundred and fifty-six selections in other than general terms since each stands on its own, a nugget of insight and speculation. “Mysterious Figure, an Assay” from 2020’s Semblance Vagrant, allusively sums up this challenge: ‘It is initially vague, a figure of constant fatigue from having to choose between the countries of poetry and prose.’ Seriously, the best one can do is cite passages and examples that illustrate the characteristics of his writing and thought. So here goes.
Giannini often writes in riddles, beautiful little poetic pieces that make you think of Zen koans. One of his new prosepoems, “Outside in 4 A.M. October Dark,” begins: ‘All Hallow’s. Stars with stars, nothing spills from the Big Dipper. It is the nothing that spells what I can’t read.’ What an aphoristic conundrum! Or take the start of another new one that likewise hinges on the natural world, “The Joy of Strong Sunlight.” With an aura of mystery and enigma it begins: ‘Pain exited at the top of my voice, because of my wrecked skeleton and being awake, so it’s odd this winter how Quasimodo appears so tall and I still hear bells above his hump.’ Likening himself to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Giannini introduces this meditation on the fragile beauties that underlie – or even “justify” – physical vulnerabilities. Later in the prosepoem Giannini evokes an owl that ‘hears the hidden vole making decisions underground.’ Sympathetically, we can already anticipate the vole’s pain when the owl’s sharp talons take hold, ‘even though we just want the joy of strong sunlight.’ Thus the prosepoem intertwines hurt and exultation in an inextricable image of life, like a piece of ancient wisdom.
Giannini also occasionally makes wry commentary on our modern world. “Online and Off,” one of the newer selections, reads:
Just after reading about A.I. improving itself
and “transforming humanity,” I met a young
woman on a beach, toddler at her hand. She
said she was an English teacher and loved and
taught poetry. She had been transforming
herself and her students, she said. There were
words from Gertrude Stein and Emily
Dickinson tattooed all the way down her left
thigh, on down to her ankle. “I love Gertrude
and Emily,” she said, their words on her leg
attesting. I wanted to kiss her feet!
Giannini’s “old school” values are evident in the piece, pointing us to what really matters. As he writes in “Inanimate Desire” from his 2017 collection, Porous Borders, ‘Life is less about meaning than it is about Desire,’ suggesting the life force that turns the world – that “transforms humanity” – rather than the latest toys we employ to speed things up.
If I had to choose just one prosepoem from all of Lamp of Whispers as emblematic of the tendency of his thought, it might be “Kindness,” from Semblance Vagrant. In the piece, a florist and his daughter are likened to Monet, ‘arranging lilies into bouquets from the cool museum of his cooler.’ The daughter is weeping for having broken the stems on the tulips, which quiver and droop because of her carelessness. This not only mars the flowers, which the reader intuits is the source of the girl’s anguish, but we also understand that this is a costly accident for the florist: ‘Money for flowers is scarce for him, the store, scarce for the family.’ And yet, the florist’s main concern is his daughter’s distress, not the financial impact. He takes the girl by her hand, and together they walk by the lily pond, ‘his kindness entering the child will refresh her as it is refreshed in him, a vibrancy revived in passing its long stem and bloom larger than both of them.’ How like Thoreau who writes in his Journal from 1852, ‘I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty & significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.’ The florist (“botanist”) has not lost his appreciation of nature, as his kindness shows. In likening the florist’s kindness to the flower itself, Giannini makes the same insight into the organic nature of beauty and kindheartedness as Thoreau. For as Thoreau writes in his Journal five years later: ‘Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it.’
David Giannini’s Lamp of Whispers is full of this kind of wisdom about the natural world and humanity’s role within it.
Jun 11 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – David Giannini
Poetry review – LAMP OF WHISPERS: Charles Rammelkamp discusses a new volume of prose poems by David Giannini
Lamp of Whispers
David Giannini
Dos Madres Press, 2026
$25.00, 230 pages
ISBN: 978-1-962847-49-0
David Giannini’s Thoreauvian meditations range from observations about the lives of cats (“Mina & Maya,” “Mina & Plato”), through “Being” in its widest sense (“The Hairless Way of Being”) to simple physical being (“M.R.I.,” a reflection on his arm – “My left arm is an idiot.”). Then again they range from winter (“Love on Ice,” “A Sense of Eternity in Winter”) via literature and art (“The Artist,” “Every Poet’s an Amateur,” “Rereading Old Masters and Translations”) to the vicissitudes and the beauty of the natural world (“The Raccoons Are Setting Out,” “The Work in Every Season Now,” “After Another Big Rain”). For really, the “prosepoems” (Giannini’s preferred spelling / description of the selections in Lamp of Whispers) are introspective contemplations of himself and the world around him in the manner of that other New England philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. The book is a “new and selected” compilation, with pieces from eight previous volumes dating back a decade to 2015’s Span of Thread as well as over forty new selections.
David Giannini’s prosepoems are justified blocks of writing, ‘vertical pieces, many of them taller than they are wide,’ as he explains in his introductory note. Though many are divided into paragraphs, others – “Solitary,” “Thinking of Leo Again,” “Construction Site,” “No Regrets,” “Protest,” “Transplant,” and “Squeeze-Box” among them – present themselves as single blocks of words on a page. But though the text is almost reassuringly presented in this discursive fashion, like an argument proceeding by developed reasoning (as Giannini further describes his prosepoems), they are ‘often nonlinear and work by associative and sometimes also symbolic interactions.’ In other words, they are more often than not intuitive rather than logical.
Indeed, one of the book’s epigraphs is from Albert Einstein: ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.’
The difficulty for the reviewer is to summarize the one hundred and fifty-six selections in other than general terms since each stands on its own, a nugget of insight and speculation. “Mysterious Figure, an Assay” from 2020’s Semblance Vagrant, allusively sums up this challenge: ‘It is initially vague, a figure of constant fatigue from having to choose between the countries of poetry and prose.’ Seriously, the best one can do is cite passages and examples that illustrate the characteristics of his writing and thought. So here goes.
Giannini often writes in riddles, beautiful little poetic pieces that make you think of Zen koans. One of his new prosepoems, “Outside in 4 A.M. October Dark,” begins: ‘All Hallow’s. Stars with stars, nothing spills from the Big Dipper. It is the nothing that spells what I can’t read.’ What an aphoristic conundrum! Or take the start of another new one that likewise hinges on the natural world, “The Joy of Strong Sunlight.” With an aura of mystery and enigma it begins: ‘Pain exited at the top of my voice, because of my wrecked skeleton and being awake, so it’s odd this winter how Quasimodo appears so tall and I still hear bells above his hump.’ Likening himself to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Giannini introduces this meditation on the fragile beauties that underlie – or even “justify” – physical vulnerabilities. Later in the prosepoem Giannini evokes an owl that ‘hears the hidden vole making decisions underground.’ Sympathetically, we can already anticipate the vole’s pain when the owl’s sharp talons take hold, ‘even though we just want the joy of strong sunlight.’ Thus the prosepoem intertwines hurt and exultation in an inextricable image of life, like a piece of ancient wisdom.
Giannini also occasionally makes wry commentary on our modern world. “Online and Off,” one of the newer selections, reads:
Just after reading about A.I. improving itself
and “transforming humanity,” I met a young
woman on a beach, toddler at her hand. She
said she was an English teacher and loved and
taught poetry. She had been transforming
herself and her students, she said. There were
words from Gertrude Stein and Emily
Dickinson tattooed all the way down her left
thigh, on down to her ankle. “I love Gertrude
and Emily,” she said, their words on her leg
attesting. I wanted to kiss her feet!
Giannini’s “old school” values are evident in the piece, pointing us to what really matters. As he writes in “Inanimate Desire” from his 2017 collection, Porous Borders, ‘Life is less about meaning than it is about Desire,’ suggesting the life force that turns the world – that “transforms humanity” – rather than the latest toys we employ to speed things up.
If I had to choose just one prosepoem from all of Lamp of Whispers as emblematic of the tendency of his thought, it might be “Kindness,” from Semblance Vagrant. In the piece, a florist and his daughter are likened to Monet, ‘arranging lilies into bouquets from the cool museum of his cooler.’ The daughter is weeping for having broken the stems on the tulips, which quiver and droop because of her carelessness. This not only mars the flowers, which the reader intuits is the source of the girl’s anguish, but we also understand that this is a costly accident for the florist: ‘Money for flowers is scarce for him, the store, scarce for the family.’ And yet, the florist’s main concern is his daughter’s distress, not the financial impact. He takes the girl by her hand, and together they walk by the lily pond, ‘his kindness entering the child will refresh her as it is refreshed in him, a vibrancy revived in passing its long stem and bloom larger than both of them.’ How like Thoreau who writes in his Journal from 1852, ‘I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty & significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.’ The florist (“botanist”) has not lost his appreciation of nature, as his kindness shows. In likening the florist’s kindness to the flower itself, Giannini makes the same insight into the organic nature of beauty and kindheartedness as Thoreau. For as Thoreau writes in his Journal five years later: ‘Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it.’
David Giannini’s Lamp of Whispers is full of this kind of wisdom about the natural world and humanity’s role within it.