The Invention of Secrecy

In The Invention of Secrecy, his eleventh collection of poetry, David Citino searches near and far-in his native Ohio, illuminated suddenly by a cosmic messenger; in Italy and Egypt, ancient and new; in Tibet; even in prehistoric and preliterary times-seeking answers to the most human of questions: What did we reverence in the past? What are our present obsessions? What does it mean to read one another? Must we always speak in our parents’ voices?

The underlying concern of these poems is the very notion of secrecy, and in his explorations Citino investigates the lives, and credentials, of our saints-both secular and otherworldly. Ramses the Great, the prophet Hosea, the Roman emperor Vespasian, Caravaggio, the Wicked Witch of the West, Padre Pio, Mario Lanza, and Princess Diana are among the larger-than-life personages materializing on these pages. Continually in these poems, the past is read by light of the present and the present from perspectives of the past.

Accessible yet ambitious, and treating all of history as the concern of those living today, these poems seek to measure the span of our lives and the distance that separates one life from another.

David Citino is professor of English and creative writing at The Ohio State University.