Cut Off the Ears of Winter

by Peter Covino

Overview

“Images of real and symbolic violence ricochet and reflect off each other in this elegant and disturbing collection. The poems chronicle, among other things, a history of childhood abuse and its after effects, but in a larger sense, they also explore through the lens of myth, art, religion, and popular culture, the underlying and often unacknowledged brutality beneath even mundane events.’’
—from the judges’ citation: PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781930974500
Publisher:	New Issues Poetry and Prose
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Series:	New Issues Poetry and Prose Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	76
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Poet, translator, and editor PETER COVINO is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. He is the winner of the 2007 PEN American/Osterweil Award for emerging poets and also the author of Cut Off the Ears of Winter (New Issues, 2005) and the chapbook Straight Boyfriend (2001), winner of the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize. His co-edited volume, Essays on Italian American Literature and Culture recently appeared from Bordighera Press, CUNY (2012).

What People are Saying About This

Lynn Emanuel

“Peter Covino's first book is spacious, wonderfully unpredictable, and insistent on ambition and scope. Cut Off the Ears of Winter is not simply an autobiography but a poetic autobiography. It moves from the confessional— stories of the body and the family—to stories of the mind, art, and history. Especially compelling is the way in which the intimate biographies of flesh and family are entwined with and inextricable from matters of art and history. On a painting of Judith and Holofernes, Covino writes ‘. . . he of the familiar scowl— / these jealousies overwhelm me . . . / and I cannot say for sure / whose severed head she holds.' Restless, worldly, intelligent, and beautiful, Cut Off the Ears of Winter is an utterly original first work.”

Editorial Reviews

Peter Covino's debut book of poetry, Cut Off the Ears of Winter, is a haunting work of desperation, abuse, redemption, and beauty. The brutality and conflict of what is at stake in these lyrical poems is rarely addressed in the foreground of the narrative. Instead, it lurks in the background of what is said. Covino's minimalist diction, conversational voice, and simple albeit effective imagery results in a personal and humanistic sense, which is easily related to. Covino handles the lyrical narrative masterfully . . .”—G. Von Bourdeau, Pebble Lake Review

From the Publisher