Dan Albergotti

Dan Albergotti's Candy is a book steeped in sound and silence. Sound in the form of song, of chaotic cacophony, and of the drone (sometimes natural, sometimes manufactured) that creates the ambient soundtrack of history and the seemingly apocalyptic present. Silence in the sense both of the void's innate quietude and of the failure to speak of people either dumbstruck or in denial, not speaking because they cannot or will not. Throughout this collection, these sounds and intermittent silences provide the rhythm for poems that question the nature of truth and myth, and that restlessly search for meaning in a reticent universe, ultimately unwilling to take no for an answer as they strive to find an ever-elusive yes.

Both bleak and bewildering, Millennial Teeth, the visceral new collection by poet Dan Albergotti, maps a contradictory journey filled with longing and dread, cynicism and hope. A heady mix of traditional forms and more experimental verse, Albergotti’s volume lures readers inexorably into the poet’s obsessions with mystery, doubt, ephemerality, and silence. The poetry in Millennial Teeth will feel both refreshingly new and strangely familiar to Albergotti’s audience. Some poems pay direct tribute to such literary luminaries as Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin, while others give nods to icons of pop culture, from Radiohead to Roman Polanski. The narrator muses on the resurrection of Christina the Astonishing, the works of Coleridge, and the mindless duties of minor players in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Yet these familiar faces are not our friends; they are juxtaposed with the heartbreaking apocalypses, both natural and man-made, that have plagued the world since the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. A reluctant witness to such events, the narrator of these poems attempts to navigate his own personal crises, including the mental illness and dementia of loved ones and the inability to connect with others, from the darkness of a personal orbit far from the sun. As he vehemently rejects the notions of religious succor, immortality, and the passive acceptance of fate, he simultaneously yearns to be proven wrong. Yet despite his trials, Albergotti’s narrator maintains a gallows humor and wry insight that balance his despair. A riveting exploration of the all-too-human struggle between faith and doubt, skepticism and obsession, Millennial Teeth has both heart and bite in plenty.

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of The Boatloads is its overt references to church and Christianity. Dan Albergotti's references are not mere proselytizing, though. In fact, the first poem in the book, "Vestibule," tells the story of the author's teenage experience making love to his girlfriend in a university chapel, saying: "Lord of this other world, let me recall that night. / Let me again hear how our whispered exclamations / near the end seemed like rising hymnal rhythm / and let me feel how those forgotten words came / from somewhere else and meant something." Dan Albergotti teaches at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.