Terrible Baubles by Lo Galluccio

(Lo Galluccio)


Terrible Baubles.
By Lo Galluccio
2009; 56pp; Pa; Alternating
Current, PO Box 398058,
Cambridge, MA 02139,
color photos by Lo Gallucio.

Review by Hugh Fox


Lo Galluccio’s non-sequitur unexpectedness is one of the most refreshing language-/thought-variants on Planet Earth: “Explosions in the open fists of leaves/Over East 4th Street America’s quilt/Drops handkerchief for patriotic infants/Crawling the street/Who don’t fuss about the November moon/Distant fixture of frozen/Niagara.” (“Moonsong,” p. 44). And if you really start meditating on the sequences here, a whole new kind of sense emerges. There’s 9-11 hidden in here somewhere, the whole idea of the U.S. being subjected to international terrorism, all contrasted with totally non-political (moons and frost) Nature.

And behind all the epistemological scrambling there is an underlying philosophy that calls for sane joy in the midst of endless man-made jumblings: “ I had a true love, I had an angry star/He flung me near, he flung me far/No Mecca can survive such an angry star/Will the moon take me back?/Will the moon have her way?/Will it take another century, a year, or a day?/It will rise again, it will rise again/Like a child whose love is God/Shiver me hard.” (“I had a True Love,” p.25). It’s a real aesthetic trip to sail through the world of Lo Galluccio’s poetry. None of the usual 1,2,3’s, but dice-throws of logic that ultimately force the reader to re-think the whole political-psychological structure of contemporary reality. You really get inside Lo Galluccio and let her flow through you and it’s like a trip through the psychedelic Andes.