Stephen Massimilla

Cover paintings © by Stephen Massimilla
Cover design © by Glynnis Osher

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Winner of The 2001 Bordighera Poetry Prize.
Sponsored by The Sonia Raiziss-Giop Foundation

Forty Floors From Yesterday
by Stephen Massimilla
A bilingual Edition Translated into Italian by Luigi Bonaffini

"The surreal imagery in these poems is crafted with a deft hand and a sure ear. The author has put to fine use the strange emotional states wrung from the marriage of unexpected things, but this strangeness is never created for its own sake - to shock us - but instead to illuminate the darker corners of our longings. These are marvelous poems. Like fairy tales they conjure, bewitch, cast inescapable spells."

- DOROTHY BARRESI (Bordighera Poetry Prize judge, American Book Award winner)

"In this millennial era it's not common to find a black-belt sonneteer; or poems whose dance macabre phantasmagoria owes something to Baudelaire and Rimbaud; or work as witty and sardonic as it is learned; or a flair for startling tropes and jewel-like visual images; or docudramas on Metropolis. To find all these things in a debut volume, though, is a rare event, one sure to strike up its own best fanfare."

- ALFRED CORN

"The surprising juxtapositions in these poems give a sense of the mystery and drama of remembering strong feelings. As in poems by Hopkins and John Wheelwright, the crowding of sounds and images can also get very exciting. I think the density of the language wonderful."

- KENNETH KOCH

"This was my winner, and by a pretty long shot. The sonnets were technically sophisticated, subtle in tone, wise in insight, vivid with the warmth of love and sad in their sense of its passing. I liked how few of the rhymes seemed obvious, and how often they had been softened by enjambment. I liked the careful back and forth between the sentence and the line."

- JOHN BURT (Grolier Prize judge)

"These intricate, handsome poems speak of anguish and joy, possession and loss with a strong verbal density that repays acquaintance. Memorable lines and images sparkle in the sky of Forty Floors from Yesterday, a formidable first collection."

- STEPHEN SANDY