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“Tony D’Arpino” – An Exacting and Visionary Poet
Born near a forest in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Named after my father and my great grandfather, both Antonio. Attended parochial grade school and pagan high schools. Dropped out of Rutgers University.
First poems published on the front page of alternative weekly Distant Drummer in Philadelphia. My daughter and granddaughter and family still live in the Philadelphia – South Jersey area.
Tony D’Arpino
/ Author
INTRODUCING
Trees of Bristol
BristolExperience First Three Months of St. Bonaventure's Island
FOR FREE
Saint Bonaventure’s Island is surrounded by a coral reef of unexplored and unmapped proportions. The island itself is seven square miles. It is triangular in shape, thickly wooded, and reaches an elevation of 1723 feet. The island is quite fertile and it should be possible to raise almost any kind of tropical or subtropical plants there. It has a circular interior lagoon of fresh water to which there is a narrow inlet. The average depth of the outer lagoon is 8 furlongs. The depth of the interior lagoon is not known. The perfection of the island lies in the architecture of an old fortress on the north side of the inner lagoon. The fortress is nothing more than a collection of crumbling stone ruins dating from a tenth century pirate expedition. On a southern cliff of the island, overlooking the ocean, is an abandoned weather station which was built by Japanese meteorologists and used for six months in 1943. There is, as already noted, an outer reef of coral, but the island itself is of volcanic origin. Indeed, St. Bonaventure’s Island is the dead head of an ancient volcano.
Bonaventure, the expositor of the theology of love, accepts St. Anselm’s ontological argument as proof of the existence of God, but he seeks God through intuition rather than reason. He follows the way of mysticism much more than philosophy; in this he is very different from Aquinas. Bonaventure’s realism reaches into the abyss of the Trinity.
For the Ontological Argument, Anselm quotes scripture: “Truly there is a God, although the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Psalms XIV.1) Which is proof by contradiction. That is, the fool is already calling something (the word “god” in his mind) “not-God.”
In answer to Anselm, Gaunilo, a modest monk signing himself Insipiens (Fool), protested that we cannot pass so magically from conception to existence, and that an equally valid argument would prove the existence of a perfect island.
It was Chesterton who said: “The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed, that is why the Saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote.”
St. Francis: “Tantum homo habet de scientia, quantum operatur.” A man has only so much knowledge as he puts to work.
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You Might Like
The Shape of the Stone – Deep Forest Press
Published in San Francisco in Tisa Walden’s beautiful chapbook series. Out of print.
The Tree Worshipper – Imaginary Press
My first book. The colophon gives the publisher’s address in the village of Halcyon, California. Out of print.
Greatest Hits: 1969-2003 – Pudding House Publications
My first Collected Poems from a small mid-American press with a sweet English name. Sadly out of print, but surfaces occasionally on eBay, AbeBooks and Alibris. A selection is available on Google books here.
The Naked Guide to Bristol
Richard Jones, publisher of Tangent Books asked me to contribute to his wonderful guide book to the Venice of the West Country. Includes my essays on Coleridge and the Romantics and Treeology on apple orchards and the ancient forests.
(7th revised edition 2019).
The Other Side of the Postcard – Anthology from City Lights, San Francisco
The Other Side of the Postcard is a kind of anti-anthology from City Lights edited by Devorah Major. Includes poems by Jack Hirschman, Opal Palmer Adisa, Q. R. Hand, Agneta Falk, Thomas Centolella, Alejandro Murguía, Janice Mirikitani, and many others. Poems from the real city, not the tourist fantasy. My poem San Francisco appears in the Poems section of this site.
The Echoing Gallery: Bristol Poets on Art in the City
This beautifully illustrated anthology includes my poem Pero’s Bridge (see the film link below).
Includes work by Matthew Barton, Edson Burton, Claire Williamson, David Punter, Alyson Hallett, Paul Deaton, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Helen Dunmore, and many other poets and artists.
Edited by Rachael Boast and published by Redcliffe Press.
Trees of Bristol
This is a natural history book about some of the woods I know. It explores local tree lore, culture, and the biodiversity of urban and ancient forests.
Floating Harbour
The cover of Floating Harbour is a photograph of the great lock where the harbour meets the River Avon. It is my first book to be published in England by Redcliffe Press.
Photography and book design by Stephen Morris.
From the back cover: This collection of sixty poems invokes the spirit of place of the author’s adopted home. From the harbourside topography and history of Bristol to the enchantment of the West Country, the poems explore the ancient precincts of St Mary Redcliffe, Chatterton, the birth of the Romantic movement, and voyages of discovery. Floating Harbour is also a celebration of love and the visible richness of water, forests and farms.
POEMS
AVAILABLE ON WEBSITES
The Caledonian Antisyzygy
The long poem “The Caledonian Anti-Syzygy” in xconnect #7 [Vol 3, No 1] (Crossconnect) (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
St. Bonaventure's Island
“St. Bonaventure’s Island” in Terra Incognita (Madrid, Spain) excerpt from novel (in English and Spanish) hard copy journal and website
The Different Forms of Flowers
The poems “The Different Forms of Flowers” and “Leaf Stalk” in Wild Violet
Leaf Stalk
Leaf stalk petiole anchors leaf to stem
Ending in the flattened blade of the surface world
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