A Housecoat Remains

Tina Biello

Guernica Editions, Fall 2015

106 pages

Trade Paperback

ISBN13: 9781550719604

ISBN10: 1550719602

English

$5.95 Canada, $5.95 US

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This collection of poems tells a multi-layered story between worlds: old country vs. new, traditional life vs. modern, health vs. illness. Biello takes us on a journey between these worlds and shows us how mother, father and daughter cope with loss and re-discover each other through the difficult illness of Alzheimer's disease. Everything must change to make way for this new journey. This is the beat of her language, culture and family disappearing, but somehow, at the heart of it all, love remains.

This poem begins in words. / As each foot treks along the path,/ walked by thousands of pilgrims before her, / is a prayer/ is a song that pulses up for all the beings on this blue planet./ We are the ones we've been waiting for./ This poem ends in silence.

In her deft homage to her post-WWII Italian parents, Biello takes us into their three shifting worlds: the old country; the new; the new-ways of their Canadian-born children. We eat sugo at their table, grab a rock to stop a repeated taunt, hold their dying hand and are invigorated by their tenacity, vitality. When you finish this book, it stays put in your heart.

Betsy Warland, author of Breathing the Page – Reading the Act of Writing

Tina Biello’s stark, spare lines capture the mysterious expanse of loss – first of a mother to Alzheimer’s, then a father. With a keen ear for the range of emotions in the human voice and for the music of language, she records this territory in a sensual and moving way, celebrating as much as she mourns our deepest connections to each other, and the ultimate requirement of love, which is to let go. A wonderful debut.

Pamela Porter, author of the Governor General’s Award-winning The Crazy Man

Reviews

B.C. poets create community of support
Vancouver Sun - July 8, 2016
Vanessa Shields Reviews A Housecoat Remains
poets.ca - July 16, 2016

Books by Tina Biello

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