Lost Luggage

Description

Journeys and interrupted journeys are a well established theme in literature. Gustave Von Aschenback’s fateful journey back to Venice and his death began with lost luggage. So also with Salvatore Ala’s new collection of poems — his third. Lost luggage and the efforts to find the things of this world retrieved and redeemed are central to Ala’s poems. In his new book he presents a unique group of poems about the world of soccer: “The Goalkeeper,” “Pelé,” The Soccer Ball,” and others, show Ala’s openness and refusal to accept the sterility of modern trends. Lost Luggage has many examples of his unique sense of style, his particular blend of candidness and depth. A rare commodity today.

“This is a collection to be cherished.”—Eugene McNamara

“Ala’s poetry not only exhibits the animating presence of a fresh idiom, but adds to the stock of available reality. Lost Luggage is a triumph.”—Len Gasparini, author of The Broken World

“In Lost Luggage, Salvatore Ala casts his signature spell, writing of everyday ‘beauty that cannot last but does.’ Above all, I admire the graceful, processional movement of his lines and thoughts – the way his poems unroll with a simple, stoic dignity, like the passage of a baptismal or funeral party in a sunwhite Sicilian town.”—Steven Heighton, author of Patient Frame