Author Spotlight
Joe Hall’s Pigafetta Is My Wife
I spent about $400 on books in Denver. This was the first I read the second I got home: Joe Hall’s Pigafetta Is My Wife. It is gorgeous, mysterious, and moving, in a way I haven’t felt of a book in a long time. I’m keeping it by my bed.
Pigafetta Is My Wife enters the crisis that is the love between the colonizer and the colonized. These poems fragment the journals of Antonio Pigafetta, a 16th Century traveler who recorded Magellan’s hellish circumnavigation of the globe, while tracking a present-day speaker and his beloved as they are distanced and reunited across the map. Along the way we visit historical moments including a botched circumcision as performance art, the Rape of Nanking, and 17th century missionaries in the Philippines. Through this intertwining of narratives the book reveals how the past and present are visceral beasts caught in a cycle of passion and destruction. Like an epic murder ballad, Hall moves from collage to epistle, suffering to ecstasy, while pinpointing what is at stake in the pursuit of love and the dismantling of the self.
Praise for Pigafetta Is My Wife:“A genuinely fine work, moving beautifully between Magellan’s voyage—the ethics therein, with language informed by discovery literature—and a series of epistles, taking the notion of circumnavigation to an unforeseeable confessional level. I like the work very much—that making necessary of history—and see it as one of lyric poetry’s responsibilities. The epilogues, too, are beautiful.”—Dan Beachy-Quick“Almost impossibly grand in scope Pigafetta Is My Wife is a rare achievement and quite a debut. Hall’s poetry crosses contemporary love and ancient epic, folding inward and out by motion derivative of the sestina and pantoum, so that whether via image or address, beautiful shards fall: ‘A chrysanthemum blossom sails across a bowl of milk.’ Emotion accretes in accordance with ambition. A treatise on the action of discovery, this is a book to be taken in whole.”—Sally Keith
Read some poems from the book here.
Read a poem not in this book here.
Buy this book direct from Black Ocean here.
Tags: black ocean, Joe Hall, pigafetta is my wife
i couldn’t possibly be more excited about this
i couldn’t possibly be more excited about this
I bought this book too and heard Joe read. It’s a super sweet book so far. I was in such a rush buy other books that I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Joe that much or get him to sign the book. Next time Joe…
I bought this book too and heard Joe read. It’s a super sweet book so far. I was in such a rush buy other books that I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Joe that much or get him to sign the book. Next time Joe…
This book broke my heart a little on the flight back from Denver. In a good way of course.
This book broke my heart a little on the flight back from Denver. In a good way of course.
What font is that?
What font is that?
Black Ocean has a nack for great books. Janaka & co. haven’t let me down yet.
Black Ocean has a nack for great books. Janaka & co. haven’t let me down yet.
A knack for totally sick covers, too.
A knack for totally sick covers, too.
Cool.
Cool.
knack. knew that didn’t seem right.
knack. knew that didn’t seem right.
Agreed. Julie Doxee’s cover is also fantastic.
Agreed. Julie Doxee’s cover is also fantastic.
Looks great – thanks for the tip.
What else did you buy out there?
Looks great – thanks for the tip.
What else did you buy out there?
On this. In my mail this week.
On this. In my mail this week.
a lot, i’ll take a picture later or something
a lot, i’ll take a picture later or something
A worthy first read/plug after AWP, indeed.
If you were lucky enough to get your copy signed by Joe he might have signed it in silver sharpie, and he might have asked “Maybe you are my wife?” And then apologized. In the signature. On that beautiful black page that separates the blue from white and poemed page. Black Ocean did an incredible job with the look and feel of it.
I have heard these poems evolve over my knowing of Joe-ness… They are stunning and resonant and I learn an incredible amount from them — both as a poet and as a human. It’s so exciting to have the book in my hands as a full experience… yes please, if you haven’t bought it already, go get it!
A worthy first read/plug after AWP, indeed.
If you were lucky enough to get your copy signed by Joe he might have signed it in silver sharpie, and he might have asked “Maybe you are my wife?” And then apologized. In the signature. On that beautiful black page that separates the blue from white and poemed page. Black Ocean did an incredible job with the look and feel of it.
I have heard these poems evolve over my knowing of Joe-ness… They are stunning and resonant and I learn an incredible amount from them — both as a poet and as a human. It’s so exciting to have the book in my hands as a full experience… yes please, if you haven’t bought it already, go get it!
Okay, I have a serious question. You see the poem on page 9 of that issuu ebook there? With all the spaced-out chunks of text?
How are you supposed to read those poems? How are you supposed to derive meaning from them, make them make sense, understand them?
It doesn’t always work horizontally.
Do you sometimes read in what we’ll ‘omni-axial clumps’?
Do you sometimes read in vertical columns?
Do the rules change? Do you just have to infer the rules from the positions of and spacings between the words?
Seriously, I’ve never known.
Okay, I have a serious question. You see the poem on page 9 of that issuu ebook there? With all the spaced-out chunks of text?
How are you supposed to read those poems? How are you supposed to derive meaning from them, make them make sense, understand them?
It doesn’t always work horizontally.
Do you sometimes read in what we’ll ‘omni-axial clumps’?
Do you sometimes read in vertical columns?
Do the rules change? Do you just have to infer the rules from the positions of and spacings between the words?
Seriously, I’ve never known.
Like, is that Helvetica or something?
Like, is that Helvetica or something?
A lovely book from a fantastic writer and reader as well! Yeah Moriah, I got the silver sharpie treatment too, magic. Congrats Joe, it was great to finally meet you!
-Erin/SpringGun
A lovely book from a fantastic writer and reader as well! Yeah Moriah, I got the silver sharpie treatment too, magic. Congrats Joe, it was great to finally meet you!
-Erin/SpringGun
That cover is sick. Could do without that font.
That cover is sick. Could do without that font.
It’s Arial.
It’s Arial.
[…] myself due to being shuttled to the back of the big big crowd when I was done oh well; coming home to this–thanks […]
Thanks for the good words, all.
The font is indeed Arial. On Doxsee’s book we went with a slightly more exotic san serif: Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Regular.
With these two new books we were going for a retro vibe, while keeping in line with the rest of our catalog’s aesthetic; Joe’s book emulating contemporary poetry titles of the 60s and 70s (a la Beacon Press and Open Library)… Julie Doxsee’s book cover was inspired by the sci-fi paperbacks put out by Penguin of the same era.
Thanks for the good words, all.
The font is indeed Arial. On Doxsee’s book we went with a slightly more exotic san serif: Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Regular.
With these two new books we were going for a retro vibe, while keeping in line with the rest of our catalog’s aesthetic; Joe’s book emulating contemporary poetry titles of the 60s and 70s (a la Beacon Press and Open Library)… Julie Doxsee’s book cover was inspired by the sci-fi paperbacks put out by Penguin of the same era.
yo anon i dont want to have to turn you in to the mods of this site cld you keep yr comments relevent plz
yo anon i dont want to have to turn you in to the mods of this site cld you keep yr comments relevent plz
holy crapyall motherfuckers have some serious opinions about font im starting to think no one on this blog can even read
holy crapyall motherfuckers have some serious opinions about font im starting to think no one on this blog can even read
well im glad we cleared that up
well im glad we cleared that up
The design of the book cover is relevant to the book and the discussion of the book.
The design of the book cover is relevant to the book and the discussion of the book.
i respecfully disagree
i respecfully disagree
With good fonts… hehe.
With good fonts… hehe.
it’s called parataxis.
it’s called parataxis.
oops, sorry. it’s called a fugue. also, wtf are you talking about?
oops, sorry. it’s called a fugue. also, wtf are you talking about?
Someone should make a venn diagram of poetry readers, book fetishists, and typographers…
Someone should make a venn diagram of poetry readers, book fetishists, and typographers…
[…] recently posted a nice spotlight on Joe Hall’s Pigafetta Is My Wife. So now I’d like to announce a fun contest in light of his post: the […]
I think what I’m talking about is quite clear, and I know what parataxis is.
What I asked was how you’re supposed to read it. What I patently did not ask is what the technique is called. Nice one.
So, then, are you implying that there is no order to the phrases? If not, your answer is no help whatsoever. I want to know how the reader, i.e. me, is supposed to know how to progress from phrase to phrase or sentence fragment to sentence fragment.
Is there an order? Is there no order? Is there sometimes an order, and other times not? Is not knowing for certain the whole point?
I suggest you spend time working on your reading comprehension abilities. At least I’m fully aware of this hole in my own.
I think what I’m talking about is quite clear, and I know what parataxis is.
What I asked was how you’re supposed to read it. What I patently did not ask is what the technique is called. Nice one.
So, then, are you implying that there is no order to the phrases? If not, your answer is no help whatsoever. I want to know how the reader, i.e. me, is supposed to know how to progress from phrase to phrase or sentence fragment to sentence fragment.
Is there an order? Is there no order? Is there sometimes an order, and other times not? Is not knowing for certain the whole point?
I suggest you spend time working on your reading comprehension abilities. At least I’m fully aware of this hole in my own.
Sorry, that was overly unpleasant.
Sorry, that was overly unpleasant.