In Defense of Puppets - Paperback

by Diane Kistner (Editor), Anthony Dimatteo (Author)

An urgent question drives this book: what is it to speak for another? Technology today often makes us feel as if we can speak for or as another. But this is an illusion. It is crucial that we remain seriously and playfully alert to the active role our imaginings have in the shaping of what we think we know of ourselves and others. Poetry is vital to raising this awareness. "Art is puppet-like," the poet Paul Celan observed. This collection of poems, some in formal, some in free verse, explores the ironies, humor, emotions, and visions produced by such multifaceted puppetry, its pleasures and dangers, its role in both grief and joy, in experience and recollection.

Author Biography

Anthony DiMatteo's poems, essays and reviews regularly appear in scholarly and literary journals. Recent work has been featured in The Cortland Review, College Literature, Renaissance Quarterly, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily. A recent book is Beautiful Problems: Poems (David Robert Books) as well as a chapbook Greetings from Elysium (Finishing Line Press). He defends the mysteries of writing, literature, and art at the New York Institute of Technology where he is a professor of English. He happily lives on Long Island with his wife, the designer and classical pianist Kathleen O'Sullivan, their twelve-year old son Michael, two dogs, and a rabbit.