A Quiet Ghost

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 NumbIn this harrowing honest and deeply personal sequence M. J. Arcangelini turns fear and pain (physical and emotional) into art. He is a tour guide who keeps the readers 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 surgeons 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 (Stubborn Mule Press 2019)