Speaking in Italics

Speaking In Italics, the fifth book of Gregg Shapiro's Talking Heads-inspired pentagony, is here!

“If you’re lucky enough to have heard Gregg Shapiro read his poems aloud, then you know he’s always speaking in italics: bold, clear, emphatic. This new chapbook hones the boldness and deepens the clarity. There are “moon-bright clouds,” women drinking coffee till “their lips are blue as tar.” It’s cinematic, with cameos by Joni, Marilyn, Madonna, Cinderella, too, and don’t forget those librarians of the 1970s, my favorite! “They married the library, like a nun/ married the church.” Above all, Speaking in Italics delivers on its lyric promise to probe “what if, what not, what else.”

-Julie Marie Wade

“In this new chapbook, Gregg Shapiro alchemically blends quotidian and fraught experiences into a life-giving elixir. Like in "Librarians in the 1970s," where a close look reveals those "girdles, garter belts and bras that resembled / suits of armor. They married the library, like a nun / married the church." In "Situation," something darker encroaches: "Out of the snake pit, into the spider’s web. This must be / the way dinosaurs felt, feet heavy as planets ..." I am holding my breath as I climb his wonderfully warped stairs, following shimmering angles of light and shade.”

-Sharon Mesmer

“Gregg Shapiro's Speaking in Italics is a lively, unflinching collection where humor and heartbreak sit side by side. Moving from Boston's North End stairwells to late-night insomnia, from love affairs to cockroach-infested apartments, these poems capture the eccentricities of queer life with wit, candor, and tenderness. Shapiro has a gift for the memorable image — a lover's "blood, black as the ink on your fingertips and lips" — that makes the ordinary shimmer with strangeness and desire. This is a book that speaks in many registers - playful, aching, sharp - but always in italics, always with emphasis.”

-Aaron Smith

“Gregg Shapiro’s Speaking in Italics lights up the night with animal eyes with electrifying poems where two people find harmony in discord (“We are us”), where even the “end-of-the-world tango” is performed with defiant grace. This is a declaration of fortitude for a world where authenticity and “sanity returns for a fleeting instant.” This is a life lived without apology proving passion is the ultimate defense against the darkness.”

-Ruben Quesada