{"title":"Thomas Centolella","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"almost-human-book-thomas-centolella-9781936797974","title":"Almost Human","description":"As in a profound love affair, Thomas Centolella’s new poems register attraction, delight, expectations fulfilled and foiled, and moments of great feeling cherished and\/or lamented. Employing the vividness of narrative without yielding to its linear strictures and overly familiar tonalities, many of the first-person protagonists in Almost Human are mysterious figures at once engaging and idiosyncratic, even outright eccentric. Often betwixt and between, neither here nor there, they are uncertain of actually getting anywhere. Almost Human documents the restive life-force incarnated in an endangered species—our own—and charts the movement of the self between spirit and human, recalling the idea, attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, that we aren’t human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50459626438929,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50459627258129,"sku":"CIN1936797976G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1936797976.jpg?v=1750931982"},{"product_id":"lights-mysteries-book-thomas-centolella-9781556591068","title":"Lights \u0026 Mysteries","description":"This second collection of poems from multi-award winning poet Centolella mixes Zen and Hasidic philosophy with classical skepticism, resulting in imaginative and compassionate impressions of daily details of life in urban America. A finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50469848416529,"sku":"CIN1556591063G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51036585591057,"sku":"NIN9781556591068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51461910298897,"sku":"CIN1556591063VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52134328959249,"sku":"NLS9781556591068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1556591063.jpg?v=1750925662"},{"product_id":"views-from-along-the-middle-way-book-thomas-centolella-9781556591617","title":"Views from Along the Middle Way","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Thomas Centolella's newest book, he asserts the need \"to make peace \/ with the indeterminate\"--a journey that leads him from the tenuous nature of human intimacy into philosophical considerations from the East and the West. The \"Middle Way\" of the title derives from both Buddha and Dante: on one hand it's the middle ground between the extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence, on the other it's an \u003ci\u003eInferno-\u003c\/i\u003elike overview of middle age.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAgainst the background of daily life in San Francisco, Centolella examines the complications of love in its various incarnations: the deviousness of romance; the necessity for, and limits of, compassion; and ultimately, the \"quality of attention and intention\" which sustains the indefatigable possibility at the center of the search for \"the Other.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn a style that ranges from long-lined, highly detailed and conversation narratives, to shorter lyrical ruminations, to the distilled, quiet utterances of haiku, Centolella presents the flow of a consciousness in flux--solitary and engaged, intimate with both the ephemeral and enduring--but always in wonder at its own sustenance.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eView #1: West\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStarting out, my heart\u003cbr\u003e was only human size. So how\u003cbr\u003e did this world come to fit\u003cbr\u003e so beautifully into it?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThomas Centolella\u003c\/b\u003e's first book \u003ci\u003eTerra Firma\u003c\/i\u003e was chosen by Denise Levertov for the National Poetry Series, and won the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. A recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship, this is his third book of poetry. He lives in San Francisco.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51037045129489,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037047718161,"sku":"NIN9781556591617","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52123445395729,"sku":"NLS9781556591617","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52815499624721,"sku":"CIN1556591616G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1556591616.jpg?v=1750958498"},{"product_id":"terra-firma-book-thomas-centolella-9781556590306","title":"Terra Firma","description":"Poetry. Winner of the 1991 American Book Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award. Selected by Denise Levertov for the National Poetry Series, this generally strong first collection, often set in the San Francisco Bay Area or in the wilderness, showcases Centolella's gift for finding wonder in the quotidian, for recovering 'the taken-for-granted.' In 'Task,' the poet writes, 'It's not a savior the world needs \/ but a savoring spirit, a way to relish what's already \/ begun to vanish,' and his best work celebrates the beauty, evanescence and inevitable grief of mortal life. An elegy for his Lebanese grandmother, 'Sito,' is especially moving, as is 'Ossi dei morti' (bones of the dead), about the Italian sweet so named: 'It's dark and bittersweet, \/ this chocolate marrow, this brief time \/ people call a life. We bite into it \/ hard. We do this together. \/ A local cure for sorrow.' At their least interesting, the poems suffer from pedestrianism and an abrupt, gunshot style--e.g., in 'The Garden': 'The closer to terra firma one is \/ the more firma one feels. After a long hike, I stink, \/ therefore I am'--Publishers Weekly.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51037412032785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037415276817,"sku":"NIN9781556590306","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52592052601105,"sku":"NLS9781556590306","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/155659030X.jpg?v=1751407790"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-thomas-centolella.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}