Dark Octaves, by Frank Paino

“Not since I sat down half a century ago on a bookstore floor with a paperback copy of Alan Dugan’s Poems have I been so astonished. Like the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand with its nine extra bass keys, Paino has a supernumerary octave up his sleeve that lends unparalleled depth to this collection.” – Roger Weingarten

“Frank Paino’s Dark Octaves is nothing less than epic, an existential odyssey, its protagonist a modern-day Prometheus suspended from a dystopian cliff. His poems are masterful, his language striking and edgy. From the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Siena and her holy anorexia to Icarus and his flight into the sun, from the miraculous metamorphosis of the luna moth to the knee on the neck of George Floyd, these poems startle, expose, and transmute their audience, ushering urgency and social responsibility.” —Rosa Lane