Title
Rapture of Matter
Files
Description
Frankie Paino was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1960. He holds a B.A. in English from Baldwin-Wallace College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. His first book of poetry,The Rapture of Matter, was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 1991. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals including The American Voice, Antioch Review,Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and Quarterly West. He has won a number of awards including the Missouri Review’s Tom McAfee Discovery Feature, a Pushcart Prize, and the 1992 Cleveland Arts Prize for poetry.
“The rapture in this superb first book is initially in the engagement with and attention to detail, a sense of care for the art that then allows Paino’s elegiac vision to achieve an elevating rapture that overcomes the deaths, the losses, the betrayals he faces. It is a vision based on a wondrous music, a mature voice that struggles passionately for dignity in the here and now. ‘Some things are worth risking everything for,’ he says in one poem, and the whole book itself is the proof of that statement. Finishing it, I think of the great Rilke, how he wrote to the young poet: ‘no experience has been too slight, and the least incident unfolds like a destiny . . . guided by an infinitely tender hand.’” –Richard Jackson
“It’s almost impossible, reading these poems, to believe they are the ingredients of a first book. So wise, so full of experience and concrete details, they hook us, as few early poems do, into sitting up half the night, rereading. There’s no doubt in my mind that Paino is already one of America’s best poets.” –Paula Rankin
More Information:
ISBN
0914946919
Publication Date
1991
Publisher
Cleveland State University Poetry Center
City
Cleveland
Disciplines
Poetry
Recommended Citation
Paino, Frank, "Rapture of Matter" (1991). CSU Poetry Center Books. 120.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clpc_bks/120
