Tombo

Explosive language, rough sensuousness, and an unflinching eye — here is a poet who doesn't look away and is committed to poetry’s first purpose: to bring song. Tombo is a book of lyrics fueled in equal parts by realism and big-fish storytelling, a book of wanderers, foghorns, summer rain, feral cats, and city jazz. Built on heartbreak particulars, these poems are raw, mysterious dilations of the moments of existence. Di Piero’s work has been praised by luminaries of the poetry world like Philip Levine, John Ashbery, Christian Wiman, the editor of POETRY, and also by The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

W. S. Di Piero is the author of ten books of poetry. A contributor to New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, and many other periodicals, he also writes a monthly column on visual arts for an independent newsweekly, the San Diego Reader. A well-known essayist on art, literature, culture, and personal experience, the latest of his five essay collections contains his recent art writings: When Can I See You Again? Di Piero’s autobiographical essays have appeared in Best American Essays, and he's an accomplished translator of Greek and Italian poetry. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, he lives in San Francisco.