THE BOX OF TORRONE

Praise for THE BOX OF TORRONE

Embark on a flavorful journey through Italy with John J. Trause's delectable poetry collection, The Box of Torrone. Each poem is a mouthwatering morsel, skillfully capturing the essence of its represented city with unpredictability and flair; it succeeds in reaching the delicate balance of flavors like in artisanal nougat. With every turn of the page, I was treated to a literary feast that left a lingering sweetness, inviting me to savor the essence of my beloved Italy in every unforgettable poem. 

—Luca Manna, Executive Director of PALS Plus library consortium and International President of Lu Vucenanzo Library in Cardile, Italy

John Trause’s latest collection, Box of Torrone, opens with the poem “In the Box,” the empirical item he lauds and resents. For the uninitiated, the contents of that box promise the unexpected: “Torrone is good enough, better even, to win sexual favors …” This collection is a romp inside, outside the box of torrone, nougat candy every Italian American kid grows up with: its aroma, its vanilla, its texture of chewy and crunch, its sweetness that causes teeth to chatter and crumble and the host-like wafer that covers top and bottom is swoon-worthy. Torrone is Trause’s platform way to fantasies, ethics, wisdom, faith, limoncello and the author’s passion to create poetry that dances and leaps over the plain pages revealing his unmitigated joy of  language many writers would like to harness.

—Maria Lisella, Queens Poet Laureate of Queens and Academy of American Poets Fellow

Remembering with great nostalgia the days spent in the country I was born, Italy, during the days in December leading to Christmas Day. Walking during the night through the narrow street of my town, Mola di Bari and breathing in, the surrounding aromas of freshly made torrone made on the spot by the numerous outdoors improvised shops. Memories I will take with me to the last days of my life.  This book is a great way of stirring up old memories and creating new experiences.

—Giovanni Simone, director of Verismo Opera

About JOHN J. TRAUSE

JOHN J. TRAUSE, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017), a book of traditional and experimental poems; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), a book of poems on art, film, and photography; Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016), a book of fictive translations, found poems, and manipulated texts; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway.  His translations, poetry, prose, scholarship, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including Post[blank]; The Antioch Review; the artists’ periodical Crossings; the Dada journal Maintenant; the journal Offerta Speciale; the Great Weather for Media anthologies It’s Animal but Merciful (2012), I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (2014), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (2019), Paper Teller Diorama (2021), and A Shape Produced by a Curve (2023); and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015).  Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets.  He is the subject of a 30-on-30-in-30 essay on The Operating System, written by Don Zirilli, and an author of an essay on Baroness Elsa at the same site, both in April 2016.  He has shared the stage with Steven Van Zandt, Anne Waldman, Karen Finley, Andrei Codrescu, and Jerome Rothenberg; the page with Billy Collins, Lita Hornick, William Carlos Williams, Woody Allen, Ted Kooser, Victor Buono, and Pope John Paul II; and the cage with the Cumaean Sibyl, Ezra Pound, Hannibal Lecter, Andrei Chikatilo, and George “The Animal” Steele.  He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative (The Red Wheelbarrow) in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.  He is fond of cunning acrostics and color-coded chiasmus.