Unsolicited Press
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • Preorders
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Merchandise
    • Subscriptions
  • The Buzz
    • Our Authors
  • Events
  • Contact
    • Guidelines
    • Editorial

Authors

Art Zilleruelo

6/5/2017

 
Picture
Art Zilleruelo is the author of Weird Vocation (Kattywompus Press, 2015), The Last Map (Unsolicited Press, 2017), and Toothsome (Spartan Press, 2020). He is Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State Schuylkill, where he teaches courses on grammar and syntax, rhetoric and composition, and cultural visions of apocalypse. He also serves as associate coordinator of Penn State Schuylkill’s Honors Program.
Picture
Art Zilleruelo’s "The Last Map" explores language’s role as the mediator between humanity and nature. Combining a deep reverence for the power of language with profound anxieties about language’s tendency to contaminate that which it represents, these poems reside between the impulse to succumb to the seductive qualities of words and the drive to penetrate through words into the unmediated world. Narrative modes ranging from history to mythology, from folklore to family legends, and from cosmology to apocalyptic eschatology are simultaneously exploited for their aesthetic potency and subjected to skeptical internal critique. Each poem engages ongoing human efforts to manage and articulate encounters with the radical otherness and uncanny familiarity of the natural world. The interpenetration of humanity and nature is revealed as both exhilarating and terrifying, and, as the cumulative effects of these encounters proliferate, the contact between these two worlds becomes increasingly fraught with complications for both. As the personae that populate these poems struggle with nature within and nature without, they come to question conventional ways of understanding themselves, their relationships, and their values. They consequently begin to perceive a new world ripe with strange possibilities, a world that all of their maps, both literal and figurative, seem ill-equipped to describe. Zilleruelo's poems display a deep commitment to pursuing poetry’s aesthetic dimensions. His disciplined, musical free verse reminds readers that poems are more than mere ideas meant to be interpreted--they are also aesthetic artifacts intended to be experienced.

What People Are Saying....

The Last Map is a spiritual journey that transcends our own minuscule limitations.  Imagine putting on the lenses by which the poet Zilleruelo sees the world, and the reader finds a place full of unexpected treasure.  While not afraid of the darkness, this collection makes a “livable fiction” of light, and the “long liquid fibers” a movable path for the eye and the spirit, a confirmation of magic—dragons and vines and worms.  With a generosity sometimes rare in poetry, Zilleruelo invites us to traverse the darkness of the human spirit unafraid, often expressing what we’ve all desired: “light enough to lead us in through the verge… where the good kindling hid.”  This is not a denial of evil, but rather a calm acceptance that where there is shadow, there can also be spark.  Each new reading has rendered a new discovery in this landscape, another acknowledgement of this painful duality.  And as seasons shift and change, so do the shadows shift.  May we all be such fertile ground where we “bleed new greens into the grass.”

​--- April Pameticky

What sticks with me when reading The Last Map is Zilleruelo's bridging of the natural world to what I'd call some kind of transcendental or spiritual realm, where one finds an appreciation for those things tangible and real. Poems like "Vines" and "Other Fires" stick out for their measured language and their invitations to readers to investigate not only the world around them but the soul within all things. Elsewhere, Zilleruelo reflects on the burdens of generations in the masterful centerpiece, "The Pipe-Tree," a poem of great depth and honesty, and amongst a great many stunning lines, he concludes the collection with some of my favorite:

 Have you ever felt
your heart match the second hand?
They breathe together a moment,
then divorce.

If my breath is the first to break,
I’ll wait for you at the lake,
and meet you where the leaves put down their stain.
​

 Kinnell once wrote: "I long for the mantle/of the great wanderers, who lighted/ their steps by the lamp/ of pure hunger and pure thirst,/ and whichever way they lurched was the way."
 With the The Last Map, Zilleruelo embarks on a similar quest, and the results are frequently stunning and always inspiring.
  ---Brian Seemann

    Authors

    All
    Adam Gibbs
    Adela Najarro
    Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
    Alison Hicks
    Alli Spotts-De Lazzer
    Amanda Williams
    Amy Shimshon-Santo
    Andrew Brenza
    Andy Smart
    Ani Manjikian
    Anne Babson
    Anne Leigh Parrish
    Anuja Ghimire
    Art Zilleruelo
    Beate Sigriddaughter
    Bekah Stogner
    Bill Mesce Jr.
    Bill Neumire
    Bill Rector
    Bree Rolfe
    Brent Terry
    Brian Looney
    Brook Bhagat
    Caleb Nichols
    Cameron Miller
    Cara Long
    Carla Sarett
    Carolyn Martin
    Carrie Close
    Catherine Moore
    Cedrick Mendoza-Tolentino
    Charles D. Brown
    Chris Drabick
    Christopher G. Bremicker
    Chuck Harp
    Claudia Serea
    C.M. Chapman
    Connor M. Bjotvedt
    Corin Reyburn
    Cynthia C. Sample
    Dan Gutstein
    Daniel Coshnear
    Darci Schummer
    David Coyle
    David E. Miller
    David Feela
    David M. Harris
    David Michael Slater
    David Wasserman
    Dominic Mann-Bertrand
    Douglas Cole
    Doug S. Haines
    E.A. Johnson
    Eleanor Levine
    Elisabeth Blair
    Ellie White
    Elosham Vog
    Emily Kiernan
    Emily Paige Wilson
    Erin Cisney
    Fernando Andres Torres
    Frances Badalamenti
    Francis Daulerio
    Gary Bolick
    Gary Carter
    Gary M. Almeter
    Gemma Cooper-Novack
    Gloria Panzera
    Grace Marie Grafton
    Hannah Calkin
    Heather Lang-Cassera
    Irshad Abdal-Haqq
    Jackson Bliss
    Janette Kennedy
    Jason Fisk
    Jason Graff
    Jay Kristensen Jr.
    J. Bryan McGeever
    J.E.A. Wallace
    Jeffery J. Bartone
    Jeffrey S. Markovitz
    Jennifer Clark
    Jeremy Jusek
    Jerrod E. Bohn
    Jessica Mehta
    Jim Bohen
    Jim Landwehr
    Jim Read
    Jim Sallis
    John Biscello
    John Sullivan
    John W. Bateman
    Jonathan Lerner
    Joseph Costa
    J. Scott Walker
    Kadzi Mutizwa
    Kayla Jeswald
    Kendra Preston Leonard
    Kevin McCoy
    Kristine Snodgrass
    Larry D. Thacker
    Laura Kiesel
    Laura LeHew
    Lenny DellaRocca
    Lisa Badner
    Liz Kellebrew
    Lizz Schumer
    LL Holt
    Lucía Orellana Damacela
    L. Ward Abel
    Margaret DeRitter
    Marilyn Katz
    Mari Matthias
    Marine Cornuet
    Mark Belair
    Mark Doherty
    Mark Fleckenstein
    Mark MacDonald
    Mary Paula Hunter
    Matt Daly
    Matthew Cole Levine
    Matthew Duffus
    Matthew LaFreniere
    Maureen Sherbondy
    Megan Denese Mealor
    Megan Dhakshini
    Megan Mary Moore
    Melanie Sevcenko
    Michael Murray
    Michael Overa
    Mick Bennett
    Nancy Christie
    Nicholas Kriefall
    Nicholas Lann
    Nigel Baldacchino
    Ohan Hominis
    Pamela Herron
    Patricia O'Donnell
    Patrick Meighan
    Paul Justison
    Peter Schireson
    Phillip Hurst
    Rachel Elliott
    Raki Kopernik
    Rana Bitar
    Rebecca A. Spears
    Rebecca Watkins
    R.E. Hengsterman
    Rhys Daly
    Richard Krause
    Richard Luftig
    Rick E. George
    Rob Carney
    Robert Crooke
    Robert Knox
    Roger Aplon
    Ron Singer
    Ron Yates
    Rosalia Scalia
    Rowe Carenen
    Russell Helms
    Sam Love
    Sandy Coomer
    Sarah Rau Peterson
    Savannah Stewart
    S.B. Borgersen
    Scott Alexander Jones
    Scott Poole
    Shahab Mogharabin
    Shann Ray
    Shelly Milliron Drancik
    Stacey Freeman
    Stephen G. Eoannou
    Stephen J. O'Shea
    Steve Levine
    Steven Charnow
    Susan P. Robbins
    Suzanne S. Rancourt
    Tara Stillions Whitehead
    Taylor García
    Taylor García
    Terry Tierney
    Thomas Calder
    Timothy O'Leary
    TK Lee
    Toby LeBlanc
    Trevor J. Houser
    Tsipi Keller
    Tyler James Russell
    Ty Spencer Vossler
    Victoria Lin
    Wayne-Daniel Berard
    Wendell Mayo
    William Alton
    William Jablonsky
    Zachary Collins

About
Books
Submission Guidelines
The Buzz
Editorial Services
Partner with us
Contact Us​
Writer Guidelines
Subscribe
Opportunities


Unsolicited Press
619.354.8005
info@unsolicitedpress.com
​Portland, Oregon

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • Preorders
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Merchandise
    • Subscriptions
  • The Buzz
    • Our Authors
  • Events
  • Contact
    • Guidelines
    • Editorial