Stephen Massimilla

The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat

Ordering Info.

Selected in the Stephen F. Austin State University Press Poetry Series Prize Competition

The Plague Doctor in His
Hull-Shaped Hat
by Stephen Massimilla

“Stephen Massimilla’s new collection is utterly lovely and entirely strange. Fixed in the exactitude of the Moment, these are poems that are ‘on their way to the next world.’ From the ‘basil-blue mornings’ of the here and now to the apocalyptic dusks of swans and neon talismans, the reader is ever included in a quick-step with the poet. Lucid and delicious, the work is riddled with sublime forms of play—word play, mind play, heart play. Many mythic characters enter these worlds: from Odysseus, Raskolnikov and Vallejo, to little LuLu and Madame La La, even one evanescent unicorn. Sublime, dead serious, wickedly funny, above all, this is a book that is a delight to partake of.”

- LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO

Cover paintings © by Stephen Massimilla
Cover design © by Glynnis Osher

Read Poems From This Book
| Ordering Info.

Winner of The 2001 Bordighera Poetry Prize.
Sponsored by The Sonia Raiziss-Giop Foundation

Forty Floors From Yesterday
by Stephen Massimilla
A bilingual Edition Translated into Italian by Luigi Bonaffini

“The surreal imagery in these poems is crafted with a deft hand and a sure ear. The author has put to fine use the strange emotional states wrung from the marriage of unexpected things, but this strangeness is never created for its own sake - to shock us - but instead to illuminate the darker corners of our longings. These are marvelous poems. Like fairy tales they conjure, bewitch, cast inescapable spells.”

- DOROTHY BARRESI (Bordighera Poetry Prize judge, American Book Award winner)

“In this millennial era it's not common to find a black-belt sonneteer; or poems whose dance macabre phantasmagoria owes something to Baudelaire and Rimbaud; or work as witty and sardonic as it is learned; or a flair for startling tropes and jewel-like visual images; or docudramas on Metropolis. To find all these things in a debut volume, though, is a rare event, one sure to strike up its own best fanfare.”

- ALFRED CORN

“The surprising juxtapositions in these poems give a sense of the mystery and drama of remembering strong feelings. As in poems by Hopkins and John Wheelwright, the crowding of sounds and images can also get very exciting. I think the density of the language wonderful.”

- KENNETH KOCH

“This was my winner, and by a pretty long shot. The sonnets were technically sophisticated, subtle in tone, wise in insight, vivid with the warmth of love and sad in their sense of its passing. I liked how few of the rhymes seemed obvious, and how often they had been softened by enjambment. I liked the careful back and forth between the sentence and the line.”

- JOHN BURT (Grolier Prize judge)

“These intricate, handsome poems speak of anguish and joy, possession and loss with a strong verbal density that repays acquaintance. Memorable lines and images sparkle in the sky of Forty Floors from Yesterday, a formidable first collection.”

- STEPHEN SANDY

Selected Anthologies:
Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems	Token Entry: Subway Poems	New Hungers for Old: One Hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry