DANIELEPANTANO.CH © 2008-10

DANIELE PANTANO.CH

Welcome to the website of poet, translator,

critic and editor Daniele Pantano

 

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Advance praise for The Oldest Hands in the World:

 

 

“I make a dish out of nothing” could be a poetic creed as well as a line from a Daniele Pantano poem, for he is an expert in molding the shapelessness of experience into a variety of crafted forms.  A romantic with a sharp intelligence, Pantano gives us poems where heart and mind move together as on a verbal bicycle built for two.

 

--Billy Collins

 

 

Fierce, uncompromising and completely authentic, The Oldest Hands in the World is a remarkable debut collection.  Scratch that--The Oldest Hands in the World is a remarkable collection, period.

 

--Jay Hopler

 

 

 

The poems of Swiss-born Daniele Pantano are shadowed by travel and exile, rich with history, music, and a love of language.   Sensuous, dramatic and intelligent, The Oldest Hands in the World is a stirring introduction to a strong and talented young poet.

--Peter Meinke

 

 

Who is brave enough to attempt the world? Daniele Pantano succeeds in this new book, evoking the world of cathedrals, arches, nights that cascade into history. It is a welcome world he illuminates. He gives us our own names back to us, familiar and unfamiliar, but ours in the newness of old possession. The Oldest Hands in the World caress us warmly, and make us thankful for the embrace. Read this world like your life.

 

--Nicholas Samaras

 


Cover image © Matt Lewis Photography

 

 

 

 


THE OLDEST HANDS IN THE WORLD

 

 

On this chair, as I am every morning, waiting

For the cappuccino and brioche to arrive,

 

And the girl with the oldest hands in the world,

I sense exile is a city reared by eternal artifice.

 

All sweet violence and thought and repetition.

 

Beyond what history has left of this topography,

The cup is whiteness, the coffee brown semen.

 

My first sip makes her appear with provender

And sandals from behind the insignificant ruins.

 

But for the time being, ruins are eucalyptus trees.

And she not a girl on her way to feed chickens

 

But a face concealed by dripping nets.  Dressed

In black sails and hair dyed a Roman blonde.

 

The lips of her soul are burning sages, I know.

Her name, I don’t.  Only her hands matter.

 

Laden with broached scars, they remind me––

Home is where children sprout in rippled soil.

 

Where footsteps are mosaics of possibility.

 

To go on.  Finish breakfast.  Read the line

That ends in God’s breath.  Again.

 

 

 

DANIELEPANTANO.CH

 

 

“I make a dish out of nothing” could be a poetic creed as well as a line from a Daniele Pantano poem, for he is an expert in molding the shapelessness of experience into a variety of crafted forms.  A romantic with a sharp intelligence, Pantano gives us poems where heart and mind move together as on a verbal bicycle built for two.

 

--Billy Collins

 

 

 

 

Pantano offers us a chance once again to see a poet live comparative literature the way Pound did–but without the frightening aspect of the extreme beard, the Roman broadcasts, or the open cage. His poetry and translations reveal that writing is different languages influencing each other at the most intimate and experienced level.

--James Reidel

 

 

 

 

It is a moral imperative to read and hear the work of Daniele Pantano, because it is one of the clearest ways by which we are able to bring the world inside. Pantano shows us a world-perspective that is increasingly necessary for us to remain alive.

--Nicholas Samaras