In his poem “Love Is Always a Radical,” Joseph Fasano writes of love, both romantic and spiritual: “it breaks / all laws / on earth.” This could serve as Fasano’s ars poetica, his rallying cry for poets, and for himself, to take the risk of what he calls “The New Passion.”
I am delighted to present this set of poems for Tupelo Quarterly, as it stands for much of what Fasano writes of in heralding The New Passion, a movement in American poetics which decries the “institutionalization” of poetry and “trades the nihilism of cleverness for the vision and urgency of wisdom.” The New Passion, Fasano writes, “is a poetics that reaches out, with radical clarity, for the true democratic vision of art,” a poetics that is neither willfully obscure (which comes from fear of being seen) nor simply craftless (which comes from fear of not being seen),” and that knows “the mark of a sick age, which has fallen in love with its own chaos, is its fear of wisdom and clarity.” The dangers, as Fasano delineates, are many, and his poetry does not balk at a “charge of sentimentality,” because “the line between sentimentality and life-saving clarity is razor-thin, and the poet must risk it.” Fasano takes that risk, again and again, with a close attention to poetic craft that aims not to draw attention to itself but rather to the reader’s awakening, to the “extraordinary sharing of what’s common.”
This gesture of Fasano is indeed extraordinary, in large part because it asks us to treat “love” not as a word frequently tossed around in the name of American emotional demonstrativeness–at home, in the marketplace, or in the back of an Uber–but as a human connection in spite of, and perhaps because of, deeply personal struggles with mental illness, trauma, and a keen sensitivity to historical and contemporary disasters.
In the selection of poems featured in Tupelo Quarterly, Fasano brings the reader in close proximity with the speaker, in a searing lyricism that calls for us to witness, to be there as the healers “cradle the face / of the dying, / the life that is trying / to speak to them, / the life that whispers, listen, / and they do.” In lieu of “the wild visions of saviors and of angels,” he invites us to “Look at each other. Look at what is there,” and these poems ask of us, without fear and with compassion, to do exactly that.
Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His books of poetry include The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions, 2024), The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His novels include The Teacher (forthcoming from Maudlin House, 2025), The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022), and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, and a nomination by Linda Pastan for the Poets Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.” His work has been widely translated and anthologized, most recently in The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber and Faber). His book The Magic Words (Penguin Random House, 2024), a collection of educational tools and poetry prompts, helps people of all ages unlock their creativity. His debut album of original songs, The Wind That Knows the Way, is available wherever music is streamed or sold. He lives and teaches in New York.