The Boatloads - by Dan Albergotti (Paperback)

About the Book

Selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

Book Synopsis

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of The Boatloads is its overt references to church and Christianity. Dan Albergotti's references are not mere proselytizing, though. In fact, the first poem in the book, "Vestibule," tells the story of the author's teenage experience making love to his girlfriend in a university chapel, saying: "Lord of this other world, let me recall that night. / Let me again hear how our whispered exclamations / near the end seemed like rising hymnal rhythm / and let me feel how those forgotten words came / from somewhere else and meant something."

Dan Albergotti teaches at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina.

Review Quotes

"The poems of The Boatloads live in this intersection where antiquity intersects modernity, where the sacred intersects the profane, where faith collides with truth."
--Kerry Krouse, in Rattle (April 2009)

"The magic of this book lies in the consistent, awe-inducing leaps and images that Albergotti makes, poem after poem, page after page." --Craig Beaven, in Blackbird (spring 2009)

"In The Boatloads, the reader confronts the notion that the book of life is generated by an absent god wresting forth beautiful songs from his pining creation." --Virginia Konchan, in Galatea Resurrects (fall 2009)

"The Boatloads confronts the paradox of the spiritual quest: if there is no God, the world is no less beautiful; if there is a God, the world is no less cruel." --Sian Griffiths, in The Georgia Review (winter 2009)

About the Author

Dan Albergotti's poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the MFA Program at UNC Greensboro where he was poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. He currently serves as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Coastal Carolina University where he teaches creative writing and literature.