Vincent Spina (Peru): A poet who looks to the past and future
|Wow, what an enticing review of Spina's extensive body of poetry! Great thanks for bringing it into the public square,…
Poetry
Recovery
by Vincent Spine (Peru 1966-69)
Independently Published
June 2024
141 pages
$11.00 (Paperback)
Unlike most poets, who can be either primarily narrativists or lyrical luminaries, Vincent Spina can be both and more. Think of Wallace Stevens but more human; think of John. Ashbury’s pyrotechnics and add a rich heart. Throw in a combination of cultural soulfulness and environmental sensitivity, all somehow shaped by his profound wisdom of how the human drama is interwoven by both. Now add Spina’s absorption of Quichua and Latin American culture — and we have an approximation of Vincent Spina’s singularity as an American poet. But it is in the poems, ultimately, where Spina plunges in like a diver with his cargo of poetic resources and resurfaces with bits of scintillating jewels, elevating us, his fellow-travelers, to the ultimate of communions: poet to reader, human to human.
. . .
Meet Vincent Spina
by Lynn Taylor
After decades of writing poetry, Vincent Spina’s newest book touches on the world, nature, memories, and his battle with cancer.
Vincent Spina has written poetry for decades and published four books of verse. But, his fifth, Recovery, may be his most personal yet. The poems, written over several years, touch on the state of the wider world, nature, reclaimed memories, and his battle with cancer.
“As I selected poems for this book, it became apparent that the underlying theme uniting them was ‘recovery.’ I don’t simply mean in the sense of recovering from an illness,” Spina said. “The word also applies to what has been lost and then found, recovered. A whole past, for instance; everything that the years cover and memory dims. I wanted to recover as much of that as possible.”
Spina grew up in Brooklyn in a third-generation Italian family. He began writing poetry in high school.
“I liked the music of poetry, the concentration of 20-30 lines. But I was never taught any of the contemporary poets until I attended college,” Spina said.
After college, Spina spent two years in the Peace Corps in a small town on the coast of Peru (1966-69) and became fluent in Spanish. He remained in Peru for another year, teaching English. While there, he discovered the work of poet Cesar Vallejo, who wrote about the agony of losing his brother, his poor health, and the suffering of the Indian population after the Spanish conquest.
“The broken syntax, the search for words to express the horror, the language bordering on chaos, and compassion for his fellow man was a major influence,” he said.
Spina returned home, went to graduate school, and earned a PhD in Latin American Literature. There he discovered John Ashbery, whose poetry resonated with what he was trying to accomplish in his own writing.
“How can you talk about love, for example, without falling into cliché? Ashbery writes at the border of what can’t be said into the silence between the truth and cliché,” Spina said.
Spina taught Spanish language and Latin American Literature at Clarion University in Pennsylvania for 20 years. Throughout his career, his poems appeared in small literary magazines. He published his first book, Outer Borough, right before he retired. Coincidently, another change was about to occur.
Vincent Spina and Florida
A friend rented a place in Gulfport for the summer and invited him to visit. The abundance of nature and the artistic ambience of the town fascinated Spina. Not long after, he purchased a home nearby in St. Petersburg.
“During my first visit to Florida I went over the Skyway Bridge and saw pelicans and ospreys, the bayous and the Gulf,” Spina said. “It blew my mind. I knew I had to live here.”
Nature features prominently in Spina’s poetry. His previous book, Theory of Roots: Homage to Boyd Hill Nature Preserve, draws on the natural world of one of his favorite local outdoor spots.
Spina has been active in Gulfport’s literary scene, with poetry readings during Literary Afternoons at The Blueberry Patch. Along with that, he contributed poems to the “Gulfport Poets” anthology, spearheaded by then-Poet Laureate Peter Hargitai.
Spina will hold a book launch for Recovery in Gulfport later this year.
|Wow, what an enticing review of Spina’s extensive body of poetry! Great thanks for bringing it into the public square, otherwise many of us would have never known of his work,
Wow, what an enticing review of Spina’s extensive body of work in poetry! Great thanks for bringing it into the public square, otherwise, most of us would never have known of his work.
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