It Starts from the Belly and Blooms

Poems by Thomas Fucaloro

It Starts from the Belly and Blooms, poems by Thomas Fucaloro

It Starts from the Belly and Blooms, poems by Thomas Fucaloro

“Thomas Fucaloro is here and he is showing you his big messy heart. (Actually, if you’re looking for other body parts, you’ll find most of them in this book.) ‘Love is a napkin,’ he says, and I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s going to take. ” –Mark Bibbins, The Anxiety of Coincidence

A strong dose of Bukowski, Breaking Bad, and brilliance. Intense and gripping, with splashes of outlandish humor, it is a full frontal assault on the challenges of modern life for outsiders. Thomas Fucaloro’s poetry hits at a gut level and resonates with full-body beauty. Poet Corrina Bain (louderARTS project) applauds the work: “It Starts from the Belly and Blooms dives facefirst into the glory and wildness of life, combining fearless authenticity, humor, and a gut-punching ear for images. All the reader can do is hope that Fucaloro be accorded what he deserves: a lasting mark on the face of American poetics.” And poet Jared Singer writes, “Thomas Fucaloro’s poetry is both insightful and surprising. His ability to connect the mundane and the heart-wrenching is without compare. This book will disarm you with its seeming non sequiturs and then amaze you with how relevant and interconnected they are. This book is a must read for anyone with even a little bit of wonder left in their life or a desire to find more whimsy.” Fucaloro’s first book, Inheriting Craziness is Like a Soft Halo of Light received rave reviews and It Starts from the Belly and Blooms digs even deeper into the poet’s seemingly limitless world of ideas, word play, rhythm and emotion.


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Praise for Thomas Fucaloro’s It Starts from the Belly and Blooms

“The book immediately cuts into me like a hot knife, birthing me into the speaker’s world–the first poem is appropriately titled “Waking up in a bathtub full of ice cubes.” Throughout the collection, bodies, and body parts, are everywhere. Instead of the reader merely observing the speaker, the reader literally is electrified to life by the words . . . The loneliness, and desire for real human interaction, is so potent, it reminded me of the utter bleakness of Eraserhead.” —Joanna C. Valente, LunaLuna Magazine

“Thomas Fucaloro is here and he is showing you his big messy heart. (Actually, if you’re looking for other body parts, you’ll find most of them in this book.) ‘Love is a napkin,’ he says, and I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s going to take. His poems are “angry and emotional and irrational / just like the cops”—but in the end, like the rest of us, the guy’s just trying to get some napkin. Let’s give him some napkin.”
Mark Bibbins, The Dance of No Hard Feelings

“Thomas Fucaloro’s poetry is both insightful and surprising. His ability to connect the mundane and the heart-wrenching is without compare. This book will disarm you with its seeming non sequiturs and then amaze you with how relevant and interconnected they are. This book is a must read for anyone with even a little bit of wonder left in their life or a desire to find more whimsy.”
Jared Singer, Poet

It Starts from the Belly and Blooms dives facefirst into the glory and wildness of life, combining fearless authenticity, humor, and a gut-punching ear for images. All the reader can do is hope that Fucaloro be accorded what he deserves: a lasting mark on the face of American poetics.”
—Corrina Bain, Writer-Performer, Staff at the louderARTS Project

So I took out my carving knife, and sliced into the belly. Surely the wound speaks just as surely as blood is a language that cradles the gut. How do you transform death into life? We peer, together, into the wound and find a miniature giraffe tangled in the intestines. I take it out and put it away in a closet, where it is both good company and a terrible haunting. When I venture into the closet we collide like children and glass doors. If you do not fear such moments of terrifying exuberance as these, then find them in Thomas Fucaloro’s It Starts from the Belly and Blooms.”—Joseph A. W. Quintela Short, Fast & Deadly (italicized portions excerpted from It Starts from the Belly and Blooms)

“Thomas Fucaloro’s It Starts from the Belly and Blooms is a six-tier crystal chandelier fitted with wax crayons in 64 colors, ranging from “Love” to “Touching” to “Lizards and Video Cameras” and all dripping onto the expensive Oriental carpet in the room where you are reading this review. It is turning the expensive pattern on the rug into an encaustic masterpiece, a shiny, glutinous pop-expressionist rainbow that occasionally bites. Also contained in this book is an entire lunar cycle, complete with self-flagellating miniature giraffes riding on an endless ocean tide, pondering eternity. They want you to read this book and make them real, then forgive them.” —Katie Peyton Short, Fast & Deadly (italicized portions excerpted from It Starts from the Belly and Blooms)


Inheriting Craziness Is Like a Soft Halo of Light

Poems by Thomas Fucaloro

Inheriting Craziness is Like a Soft Halo of Light by Thomas Fucaloro

“Thomas Fucaloro is a force. His poems are ball-peen hammers. Don’t be misled—they come at you politely, offer a warm smile, and when you least expect it, knock you senseless.” –Jeanann Verlee

Thomas Fucaloro’s spectacular first collection of poetry is a beautiful, raw, intense read. According to Emily Kagan Trenchard, curator of the louderARTS Project, “Thomas Fucaloro’s particular gift is to harness the crazed wisdom at the bottom of the bottle, to scrape a fleck of beauty from the underside of a binge, and to call madness by a name so familiar we can’t help but recognize it in ourselves.” In these 57 poems, Fucaloro brings to light new angles of perception of madness, addiction and modern urban living. Each poem takes risks in form and content. As author Jon Sands notes, “To read Thomas is to literally discover each line with him. There’s really nothing he won’t say. He’s as surprised as you are.”


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About Thomas Fucaloro

Thomas Fucaloro, photo by Kristopher Johnson

Thomas Fucaloro, photo by Kristopher Johnson

Thomas Fucaloro is an NYC poet and editor for Great Weather for Media. He is the author of two Three Rooms Press poetry collections, Inheriting Craziness is Like a Soft Halo of Light and It Starts from the Belly and Blooms. He has been on two National Slam Teams and received his MFA in creative writing at the New School. He lives in Staten Island.

 

 

 

 

 

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