In this rich collection, W. S. Di Piero seeks the spirit and substance of illumination in all its forms. He finds meaning, or shows us how we attempt to do so, in the rituals and events that mark our yearthe Fourth of July, Halloween, New Year's Eveand in the ordinary activities of mowing, dancing, drinking, trying to stay warm. "The Kiss" recounts how, as a young man, the poet was not called to the priesthood; in "Prayer Meeting," he recalls watching his mother iron, with her "hopeless routine longing," and declares, "I wanted more than what I prayed for." For all their simplicity, Di Piero's direct, often conversational turns of phrase reveal a world aflame with troubles, with love, with surprising lyrical epiphanies. Didn't You Say Desire Is like the elephant fog shredded north a white sun going down Bessemers fired through clouds horizoned on my dog-eared stack It feels good and right to waste earnest hours of an early evening's daylight saving time in uncertainty and want these cranky climates changing in us while we haven't started dinner yet.

W. S. Di Piero was born in South Philadelphia in 1945. He is the author of eight books of poetry, as well as four volumes of translations. He writes about art for the <i>San Diego Reader</i> and has published three collections of essays and criticism on art, literature, and personal experience. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Lila Wallace—<i>Reader’s Digest</i> Writers’ Award. He lives in San Francisco and teaches at Stanford University.<br><br>W. S. Di Piero’s <i>Skirts and Slacks</i> is available in Knopf paperback.

Didn’t You Say Desire Is

like the elephant fog
shredded north
a white sun going down
Bessemers fired
through clouds horizoned
on my dog-eared stack
It feels good and right
to waste earnest hours
of an early evening’s
daylight savings time
in uncertainty and want
these cranky climates
changing in us while we
haven’t started dinner yet.

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Excerpted from Brother Fire: Poems by W. S. Di Piero
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