Sam Truitt

Vertical Elegies: Three Works Sam Truitt

Poetry. Sam Truitt's landmark work of contemporary poetry, VERTICAL ELEGIES: THREE WORKS consists of the long poem 'Song of Rasputin, ' the 40-day poetic chronicle 'Raton Rex, ' and the multi-layered concrete poem 'Falltime.' Sam Truitt's poems have a don't-stop-me-now-I'm-almost-there urgency to them. He has always been disposed to the book-length rather than the page-length poem. He has no patience for the voice's removal from the scene--the language he seems destined to sing holds too much hubris, speed, and childlike wonder to hold back. Instead, cunning formal maneuverings provide the distance and displacement needed to rattle the teeth of syntax and alter the current beat. As a reader, one gets caught up in the frenzy. There is the pleasure of verbal abandon and the reassurance of visual control. There is the perpetually keyed-up anticipation of anything-could-happen-here...--C. D. Wrigh