M.J. Arcangelini A Quiet Ghost Luchador Press 62 Pages $13.00 reviewed by Rusty Barnes M.J. Arcangelini's A Quiet Ghost is a quiet revelation. Through a series of short narrative poems, Arcangelini takes us through and beyond all the stresses that come with open-heart surgery. Even the epigraph from Moby Dick from which the book's title emerges, we see already the signs of a careful poetic mind setting a deliberate tone. In "Expiration Date" a poem which treats Arcangelini's heart as a product with a date beyond which lies death, the stanza is broken up by three indented instances of the words 'expiration date' and more later on which serve to warn us that what is coming might uh, be grim. "Spread across three arteries,/repeated, a motif, a design, a sign,/my expiration date." We can see as the speaker does later on in the poem, this doom arising to greet him as the speaker observes the doctor, . . .he had/ seen my expiration date and/ he was ...
Like the title says.