In his newest book of poetry, Dark Octaves (Longleaf Press, 2025), Frank Paino presents multiple observations about the human condition—that state of being he relies on as a framework for each literary octave.
The collection’s seventy-three poems are played/presented to the reader in four movements: The Gift of Fire, The Only Kingdom, Late Light, and Pietà. Each carries words and images that transform into . . . somewhere.
I share reflections of several of his creations from the collection.
Muse is an ekphrastic lyric that plays off a mixed media piece of visual art by Laura Christensen, who has said of her work, “I reinvent each photograph... I collaborate with the objects to create something new with the old.” Paino’s words dance: “lungs tight with held breath . . .” and “. . . gunmetal fish graze long whiskers through algal gloom.” The poem also serves as a warning about the planet whose human damage is apparent all around us.
Death’s Tailor is a kind of conversation waiting for a beginning. The words speak of preparation, “the music of his sewing machine,” as the 42-year-old inventor of the parachute climbs upward. “. . . There is no way to take it back, no time for awkward wings to unfurl before the merciless return to ground . . .”
Emmett Till’s Casket is a poem in the fourth movement, Pietà. It conflates Michelangelo’s, “Madonna della Pietà with Till’s brutal murder “...this is the story of a Black child who never woke to see fifteen” “. . . (a story) of boot
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heels, bullets, barbed wire . . .” Paino writes. There is no purity, no rose window, no beauty. The poem continues, “This is a story of a mother denied . . . who lifted him, regardless, in her refusal to turn or let us turn from this terrible transfiguration.” There is no glory in his transformation.
Paino acknowledges many as contributors to these poems, though two left their mark in an especially meaningful way. One faced death with the words, “I am not afraid.” The other, the poet calls his “luckiest star!” I highly recommend reading this fine collection of poems, though I caution the reader to be prepared for an intense dance with images, assumptions, and movement.