The Standing Wave: Poems

By Gabriel Spera

Book Overview

An exciting first collection of poetry from an emerging talent, Gabriel Spera's The Standing Wave was a winner of the 2002 National Poetry Series Open Competition, selected by esteemed poet Dave Smith. For over twenty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Cole Swensen, Thylias Moss, Mark Levine, and Dionisio Martinez.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060541822
• ISBN13: 9780060541828
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Living the Exquisite Experience

Gabriel Spera takes words beyond poetry and steps into a space so exquisite and rare it can only be described as a spiritual reverence for experience. His poems are complex art forms surfacing from the deep ocean of his experience. On the surface, "The Weaver's Error" is a story of a spider building a web in an inconvenient space, as if taking over his territory. As he stands and observes this natural wonder "darned between the house eaves and the fence" he starts to consider his place in the wonder of the world. The Mission Olive is a poetic cooking lesson with beautiful results. While cookbooks explain how to make olives delicious, he prefers an older method with salt. Gabriel Spera describes the experience of picking olives and how they wake to become pearl-black and delicious. "My hand's small tongues grow blacker in swallowing the dark fruit dangling like gems of tar or opulent mussels clustered to some sea beast's restless green and silvered mane..." Each poem in this collection shows an intimate connection with language and the ability to take experience, and like a recipe, form images of great beauty with memory, emotional connections and visual catalysts. Vacation in Stone Harbor is an excellent example of how poetry becomes a nostalgic escape. "Even when you're not home, you find you leave /the house unlocked, the bikes out front..." The poem, Kindness, is startling and deeply thoughtful. For me, it was a completely new and almost shocking way at looking at the concept of grace. A few of the poems do have a more visceral energy. There are poems that seem to be speaking of the horrors of war and Gabriel Spera also writes a poem to explain the sorrows of the unlived life. A life filled with terror and a complete lack of beauty: "They have never strewn their weary limbs beside pup tents pitched on a tundra of flat gray stones beside a glacier watching the Northern Lights spill like powdered sugar through the sky." There are many ways to live your life and Gabriel Spera seems to have chosen to see the invisible undercurrents, he has risen above the waves all while feeling the energy of the surging sea. He is living the exquisite experience. ~The Rebecca Review