My Last Resume: New & Collected Poems 1971-1980 / 1999-2023

My Last Resume: New & Collected Poems 1971-1980 / 1999-2023

My Last Resume

When I was a troubadour
When I was an astronaut
When I was a pirate
You should have seen my closet
You would have loved my shoes.
Kindly consider my application
Even though your position is filled.
This is my stash of snow globes
This is my favorite whip
This is a picture of me with a macaw
This is a song I almost could sing.
When I was a freight train
When I was a satellite
When I was a campfire
You should have seen the starburst
You should have tasted my tomato.
I feel sorry for you I’m unqualified
This is my finest tube of toothpaste
This is when I rode like the raj on a yak
This is the gasoline this is the match.
When I was Hegel’s dialectic
When I was something Rothko forgot
When I was moonlight paving the street
You should have seen the roiling shore
You should have heard the swarm of bees.

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My Last Resume: New and Collected Poems showcases an exquisite body of poetry spanning more than five decades. While Joseph Di Prisco, a true Renaissance man, has achieved success across genres, his lifetime of work showcased in the long-awaited My Last Resume is proof that, for Joe, it's always been poetry.

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The final poem of the collection, “Last Leg on the Starlike,” brings us full circle from 1975’s “Starlike.” I love this line particularly: “You lift an arm—you know how it is—and wave back.” The concluding poem depicts a train moving forward through possibilities and finding destinations elsewhere, through endless sunsets, stars, and amusements and brings us to this to these concluding lines: “…And at the Ferris wheel top/ It has to be you, holding your breath before the drop.” I was struck with the moments of rupture throughout this collection, a poet surveying the ground that has been covered in those rapturous moments when we see through the existential questions of life, and quite simply, present the reader with some wit and wisdom to weather the rises and drops as we all compile our resumes for the inevitable fall.

– Ian Maloney, Vol. 1. Brooklyn
Hey, I know poetry's an acquired taste. Something I've only acquired intermittently. But MY LAST RESUME isn't a bunch of whimsical rhymes; it's words that plumb the guts of how we think, what we say, what we don't say, how we relate, how we laugh or cry at the world and those in it; how we look inward, outward, backwards, and forwards. My God, they gave Dylan the Nobel Prize for a pretty good four-year run. Putting it to music made his poetry memorable, until he had no more to say. (At least to me). You could put probably ninety percent of Di Prisco's poems to music, and he'd have a houseful of Nobels and Grammys as doorstops. On page 48, there's a poem called 'I Was Just Leaving.' Check it out, then for the good of your soul and your brain and your heart, read the rest of them. Buy, borrow, or steal this collection. You'll smile. And yeah, occasionally you'll need a dictionary to know which way the wind blows.

— Reuben Leder, Screenwriter, Director, Producer, and Author of "You Might Feel A Little Prick"
“I just love Joe Di Prisco’s poems. They move with lightness and grace, arriving again and again at the joy of surprise. They have humor, wisdom, sorrow, joy, love.”

—Matthew Zapruder, Story of a Poem and Father’s Day
“Di Prisco's poetry is easy to get swept away in, with a lulling rhythm in many poems that always land somewhere unexpected and delightful. A gorgeous read.”

Janine de Boisblanc

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Vol.1 Brookyln
Ruptures and Raptures Resumed: A Review of Joseph Di Prisco’s “My Last Resume: New & Collected Poems 1971-1980 / 1999-2023”
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