What Bends Us Blue

Know about the book -

What Bends Us Blue is written by Tom Lombardo and published by WordTech Editions. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1625490240 (ISBN 10) and 9781625490247 (ISBN 13).

Mixing wry humor and heartbreaking lyricism, the poems of Tom Lombardo's WHAT BENDS US BLUE make beauty out of sadness, and joy out of pain. "WHAT BENDS US BLUE is a remarkable book: part elegy (for the human and the world), part wild praise (ditto for the human and the world), part funny, tough defiance of the inevitable, and ALL memorable, all acetylene torches, all caresses." -Thomas Lux "Tom Lombardo gives us the wet torn pieces of life, fractures in the family, a marriage 'packed in ice.' In lines that bring myth and pop culture together in a bubbling of language, we feel ourselves entering 'tomorrow's kind of love.'" -Kate Gale "The opening poem of Tom Lombardo's WHAT BENDS US BLUE compares the drop of a harmonica player's jaw at a bluesy moment of resolution to that of a 'skydiver stepping off WHA....' This tight, vivid metaphor could also describe the way Lombardo plummets his reader into and through this startlingly original collection. These poems, one by one, plunge the reader through spheres of divergent emotions-from hilarity and satire and irony to the heartbreaking depths of passion and despair. And there is no subject this poet lacks the courage to dive into: the untimely death of a cherished first wife; the poet's own 'little heart attack'; a Sicilian grandmother's urgent culinary need for sanguine noce; the fantastical invention of a snowsuit that would allow skiers of the female persuasion, along with their male counterparts, to remain standing while urinating; the possible catastrophe of global warming; and even a husband's insightful-and cautiously respectful-take on the phenomenon of PMS. These are poems of both head and heart, deeply lived, fully confronted, and brilliantly crafted. Poems that chronicle a life that even after the most devastating losses and imminent dangers will, with steadfast hope, 'rise again...and drink a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau.' Here's to Tom Lombardo and this exquisite first collection." -Cathy Smith Bowers