A Quiet Ghost

5/5 ( ratings)

M.J. Arcangelini has long been one of my favorite storytellers, his work infused with insight, presence, passion, self-deprecation, attention to the moment, and above all, heart. In his latest poem sequence, A Quiet Ghost, he brings his estimable sensibilities home, quite literally, to address his own open-heart surgery experience. The result is a lean and moving narrative in verse with a persistent rhythm that underscores the preciousness of every conscious and insensible, rugged and tender, heartbreaking and love-filled component of a fully human experience. The ghost may be quiet, but the man is wonderfully alive. Read this book and feel the lifeforce course more warmly through you.

— John Burroughs, Ohio Beat Poet Laureate, author of Rattle and Numb

"In this harrowing, honest, and deeply personal sequence M. J. Arcangelini turns fear and pain into art. He is a tour guide who keeps the reader's interest through observations large and small. These are visceral, grounded poems concerned with what Robert Lowell called, "the grace of accuracy." In poem after poem, grace abounds."

— Mike James, author of Crows in the Jukebox and Parades

"In A Quiet Ghost, M. J. Arcangelini takes us on an illuminative and harrowing narrative through his abrupt diagnosis, cardiac surgery, and ultimately successful recovery. Beginning with "CABG Prelude," where he observes that, as a poet, he has an "overactive heart," Arcangelini bares his confrontation with a life-changing event, the loving-but violent-invasion of an open-heart operation. In one of the concluding poems, "Morning Ablutions," he finds "...mortality carved/into my skin, /the always reminder/of an encounter with/death interrupted/by the surgeon's knife/but waiting patiently/for the right moment/to return." In these poems, he defines his mortality with humor, acceptance, hope, gentle reproof, and a sharp eye on the future."

— Dianne Borsenik, author of Raga for What Comes Next