Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino was born in Greenwich Village, New York, and was raised in both the city and in the country across the Hudson River in New Jersey. He was educated at home, eventually to enter Fordham University where he received a degree in philosophy. In 2009 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Doctor of Arts in Leadership program at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. His poetry and prose have appeared in print in Barrow Street, The Germ, jubilat, Washington Review, in OCHO #21 and in Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics and online at GAMMM, Onedit, Pindeldyboz, In Posse Review, GutCult, The Tower Journal, elimae, EOAGH, Typo, Word For/Word and at The Poet’s Corner at Fieralingue. His chaps include igne (Runaway Spoon Press, 1993) and Go (SCORE, 1993) and his e-chaps include The Logoclasody Manifesto (Eratio Editions, 2008) and Six Comets Are Coming (Eratio Editions, 2009). In his spare time he edits the online poetry journal, Eratio.
What is your poetic statement?
This can be found in my e-chap, The Logoclasody Manifesto. A somewhat condensed statement can be found under my name at The Poet’s Corner at Fieralingue.
List up to five bullet points any major events which changed or moved your writing experience.
The history of my writing is such that I can only describe its events (which is to say, its “history”) as “interior.” And while I do consider my poetry to be a documentation (in the sense of intellectual autobiography), it is in nowise “journalistic.” There are, certainly, the weddings and the funerals and the wars and the loves and the losses-incurred, but my poetry, while it can be moved by emotion, is such that I would describe it as Platonic, the stuff of the Platonic chora, the stuff of language in eidos, which is to say my poetry is about language, and thus my terms “grammaticism” and “logoclastics.”
Please tell our readers what projects you are currently working on.
A second edition of The Logoclasody Manifesto, a collection of poems for Dead Academics Press, and a second volume of Six Comets Are Coming.
What was your biggest triumph in the last 10 years?
Receiving the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Doctor of Arts in Leadership program at Franklin Pierce University and having the honor of hooding my student at the doctoral hooding ceremony.
Do you have any regrets and if so what would you have done different?
Every cloud has a silver lining. As I get older I find I am better able to recognize and to appreciate that silver lining.
Which publication had the biggest impact on your work and why?
It was an artist’s book, not by me but based on my poetry, by the American sculptor and poet Joseph F. Keppler, and it was/is entitled, 3 Poems Introduced by Joseph F. Keppler. I cite this one because it brought home to me, like never before, that my poetry was indeed communicative, that it did indeed have communicative value, and what’s more it demonstrated to me that poetry, real poetry, is only really poetry when it is speaking to a kindred voice, to a kindred soul, or else, and alas, it’s just a dry, academic exercise, of value, yes, but of little real poetic value.
Provide advice for someone that is just starting to write poetry and submitting their work.
Rewrite, and know your market!
Please share one poem of yours which you feel best represents your work in the past 10 years.
Donation Street
to see, is upon you, my love
accord, of its own room
is dash or passage, a voice
unannounced, beginning, out of cups
and see, a little nearer
as of, or, to see another, an Adam
in pane, or day, or, for, to see
or,
to lie abed
on row, sleepless, and gone again, freely
a braid, as an air, or, can
inarm a gin or reach or compensation, when
a pedal
being able and intelligent, or left untied
are soon, or, in groups
in rest, in taste, or air or still, my love
a sympathetic sound, can, or great day
or,
so is always, so
a visitor, a note, a saying, a style
is lost, or, to fraternity
will have a peer, a, or marks a place
as to color, as to open, to mention and to pause
and so on
to sentence
a second eye to a face in profile
or found his posture so delightful, so, when
a flute or voice comes in a distance
and so on, to see, a sound, a turn
a visitor
being followed, to purpose
quieted, as good as settled, or waited, or come up
even,
when there is no moon in the sky
GOSS183 Publishing Group 