Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems [Paperback]

Now in paperback: the “lovely and evocative book” (San Francisco Chronicle) of poems both new and old that celebrates a quarter century of passionate engagement with real life and its transformation into poetic form: the pull of faith and the poet’s suspicion of transcendence, urban worlds and the mysterious jazz of street language, desire and sexual need, love and loss.“[A] fine book . . . It’s clear that what Di Piero believes in is poetry, not redemptively but descriptively. Poetry allows him to see the world, which enables him to bear living in it.” —Poetry

“Di Piero’s verses resound with tiny correspondences and internal echoes, and the density of his later poems, despite their readerfriendliness and beautiful images, weighs hard on the reader’s heart, leaving an impress that is slow to fade.” —The Philadelphia InquirerW. S. Di Piero was born in South Philadelphia in 1945. He is the author of eight previous books of poetry, as well as three volumes of translation from the Italian. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he lives in San Francisco.Smoke We loiter in the cobblestone alley,Beans, Clams, Yom-Yom and me,smoking punk. Snip the wiry stem,trim the nubby end, scratch firefrom a zipper then pass the stink around.William Penn designed these blockssquared off, brick, crosshatched by alleysto prevent the spread of fire. So fireruns down my throat, reedturning to iron inside my lungs.Yom-Yom has an uncle in Bucks County.Country boys sneak behind barns and puffon cedar bark. Smoke’s the only thingwe have in common. Smoke when our breathmeets cold moist air, though no smoke ringsin winter, while sullen cars drag gray on graydown cilc�