Poetry. "Joseph Zaccardi writes about what is relevant to all of us—death, and therefore life; desire, time, distance, myth versus fact, war and its consequences. THE NINE GRADATIONS OF LIGHT is a gift, a lyrical journey into how people have dealt with these connections through the ages."—Stephanie Mendel

The Nine Gradations of Light

Literature & Fiction

Zaccardi, Joseph

Poetry

Bark For Me Publications

Poetry. RENDER by Joseph Zaccardi is a collection of poetry that covers territory both painful and sublime. Joseph is a fine poet who has clearly mastered the craft of writing. He makes no mistakes as he guides us through the pain and then lifts us gently. In "From Baker Beach to the Golden Gate" he opens a difficult moment, provides a daring question and then lets us stay in the question and gather deep, personal answers. "Pulling / the disparate together: those who leapt, those / who walked away, and the man who wrote / in his suicide letter that he wouldn't jump / if only one person smiled at him." RENDER is like this throughout. It is satisfying to be in the throes of a poet of such quality who has such respect for his reader.

Render

Poetic Matrix Press

Songbirds of the Nine Rivers

Sixteen Rivers Press

At times a gut punch, at times a gentle stroke, The Weight of Bodily Touches is felt deeply from first to last. Here Joseph Zaccardi shares with us his remarkable views of the weight of the world on humans. Like the mother who “digs up her (stillborn) child’s scaffold of white bones,” we may find ourselves returning repeatedly to certain poems because they have become part of our being and we cannot let them go.
––Matthew J. Spireng, author of What Focus Is and Out of Body
In The Weight of Bodily Touches, Joseph Zaccardi's beautiful poems resonate with passion and compassion. There is an Asian nuance to his work as well as a real sense that, like Wordsworth, he values "emotion recollected in tranquility." This is a collection of lyric and prose poems which explore both the joys and perils of trying to live from day to day. In the poem called "Seed Clusters," Zaccardi writes, "The harmony of sounds from times past scatters, / Then coalesces and gathers, then releases." This is a message for us all. Read this fine book!
––Susan Terris, author of Familiar Tense
Over and over, the poems in Joe Zaccardi’s new book, The Weight of Bodily Touches, touch my heart. Ordinary and extraordinary moments are given bright form and mysterious associative power. As here, on a crowded bus in San Francisco: “…trapped in cycles tied in knots swaying side-to-side… a pod of people [bodies] moving to their own beats in their own cages… I read a fragment from an ancient text posted above the back exit folding doors about a crane who lived for a millennium and how there was no one there to witness its beginning and end.” This is soul work, deep, bracing, and original. To paraphrase Auden, in the prison of our days, Zaccardi shows us how to praise.
––Murray Silverstein, author of Any Old Wolf and Master of Leaves

The Weight of Bodily Touches

Kelsay Books

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