Poetry. David Giannini's FACES SOMEWHERE WILD spans his 45 years in the Berkshire hill-towns of Massachusetts. Like the farmer whose 'face resembles what's fixed and moves around him, ' he is an astute observer of other faces. The man- with-the-broom who walks the streets making sweeping gestures reminds the poet, 'We are becoming motes or star dust.' This resonates with the cosmic pedigree of the fallen drunk by the roadside: 'I drink the ancient atoms from a cask. Old Jane 'sees her dead daughter is a whitetail doe.' The poet tracks the faces he sees for traces of the original faces 'somewhere wild', the revelation of 'something you were before all else, / something you were before all this.' Giannini is the poet-hunter, who identifies himself as prey, in search of what waits at the threshold of expression: 'It wants to grab you by the throat. You don't turn away; /instead, you unbutton your shirt.' Even as he fleshes the world with words, the poet strips it back to a superordinate mystery of 'atoms in super positions / in two or more planes at once.' Giannini deliberately makes no attempt to resolve the paradox. Our guide through the Berkshires renders the vessel of creation as both full and empty. 'Feeling emptiness wing into you with its terror Then owl to the empty nest. No reason not to have wept.' FACES SOMEWHERE WILD is a perch where the burden of mortality touches our hearts. Highly recommended. - Paul Pine