Wild Civility

<p>David Biespiel’s long poetic lines crackle with rhythmic energy and a jazzy bittersweet richness of language. Rolling out across the page like darkly luminous highways his innovative nine-line American sonnets promise adventure offering a variant on the sonnet form that is both lyric and dramatic and bringing his masterful formal inventiveness to free verse. I’ve come to imagine the nine-line sonnet to be like one of those classic Thunderbirds says Biespiel something distinctly American: wide roomy and with a robust engine.<br/><br/>The vastly varied voices within the poems are united by a wonderfully limber diction. Using with revelatory precision the vocabularies of history science art sport philosophy religion literature government and domestic life Biespiel has crafted a hip melodic elastic language that travels the registers of expression: lush and coarse gaudy and austere pliant and rigidly tough. The civility of the poems is the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language.<br/><br/>Passionate resilient rich with wit and word play these poems affirm David Biespiel’s increasing stature as a poet of remarkable accomplishment and promise.</p>