Works
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"In 2020, I described John Pietaro's The Mercer Stands Burning as a love poem to the muse and to NYC itself. One foot out of the pandemic, A Bleeding in Black Leather is part punk rock dirge, part jazz symphony, paying homage to the lost and to the living treasures. Sonny stands at the bridge and Selby's Brooklyn "surrounds Manhattan like a fallen idol." The last lines are, I hope, a segue to the next installment: 'So smeared, the rainbows of ink…saturation to the vivid'."
-PUMA PERL, rock-n-roll poet of the Lower East Side, resident poet of Chelsea Community News, she leads the band Puma Perl & Friends. Puma's latest publication is Birthdays Before and After.
"This groundbreaking collection by John Pietaro is all New York. At night. These amazing poems and tales are influenced by the Beats, punk and jazz –but Melville remains very much alive in these pages, too. A Bleeding in Black Leather is the continuation of great art."
-RON KOLM, poet, editor, founding member of the Unbearables, and downtown archivist of the NYU Library. His latest book is Swimming in the Shallow End.
"Damn—John's drawing us in again with well-wrought words—this time A Bleeding in Black Leather...the Big Apple's the backdrop! Props!"
-RAYMOND NAT TURNER, Poet-in-Residence of Black Agenda Report, he co-leads jazz/poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC
"The Night Leonard Cohen Died reads like a literary documentary reel; even the day and the hour of creation are recorded. How cool. A truly poetic cinéma verité."
-ANDREW STYS, artist, filmmaker, UK
"Pietaro's straightforward urban writing style is reminiscent of Beat literature, with a clear progressive view."
-ANTHONY MANGO, People's World
The Mercer Stands Burning
Night Poems by John Pietaro
(Atmosphere Press)
With The Mercer Stands Burning John Pietaro embarks on a foray of verse, one threading standard poetic forms through the revolutionary and the narrative. These works are as drenched in New York's radical core and colorful history as its post-punk, free jazz and spoken word soundscape.
John Pietaro is a writer, poet, musician and cultural organizer from Brooklyn NY. A denizen of downtown's underground, he has been known to thrive in the dark. These are Night Poems.
"The Mercer Stands Burning, the groundbreaking collection of poems by John Pietaro, is "for New York", as he says in the dedication. These amazing poems are influenced by Jazz and the Beats – Miles and Coltrane, and the late Steve Dalachinsky, but Melville is very much alive in these pages, too." -Ron Kolm
"I don't know if John Pietaro set out to create one long love poem to the muse, to the poets, writers, and musicians, to New York City, its dark streets and long nights, but it turns out to be just what we need in these uncertain times. In this writer's opinion, he has assembled his best work to date." -Puma Perl
"John Pietaro's words are soul cries and observations from a Real Human longing for light, like the moan of a saxophone in the NYC pandemic isolation night!" -Billy Lamont
"A tireless fighter and organizer on the cultural front, John Pietaro now shows up with a timely volume of tightly crafted, silvery sinewed poems." -Raymond Nat Turner
Published by Atmosphere Press
122 pp
Available November 30, 2020
https://atmospherepress.com/books/the-mercer-stands-burning-by-john-pietaro/
For more information on author John Pietaro visit http://JohnPietaro.com
Press inquiries: New Masses Media newmassesmedia@gmail.com
"Smoke Rings", poetry chapbook. published October 2019:
Poetry for the after-hours, later than the night. With "Smoke Rings", John Pietaro, a writer whose work is impassioned with the literature of rebellion, the heritage of noir and the urbanity downtown, presents his debut chapbook, a terse, dark and sometimes satirical homage to New York at night. Dismissing the elitist venues and developers which have ghettoized artists over generations, "Smoke Rings" encompasses the edge of the tapestry, the free jazz, punk culture, modernist verse, bold performance and radical politics that cast the vision. Plainly put, here's a collection of works from just beneath the underground.
CONTENTS: Haze/5:03AM (for Steve Dalachinsky)/Discreet Foundlings of Quiet Places (for the Velvet Underground)/Blue/Dancing to Incessant June (for Bern Nix)/The People of Night/Impressions (for John Coltrane)/Langston/Sonic Incursion/Robert Quine on the Rocks/The Lonely/Conjured and Cast (for Kenneth Fearing)/Burroughs Inferno and more
A Bleeding in Black Leather
A Bleeding in Black Leather (Uncollected Press/Raw Art Review, 2022) With A Bleeding in Black Leather, John Pietaro takes urban poetry and fiction on a throbbing roller-coaster ride through latent modernism, self-exploration, jagged rhythmic cadences and the raw sounds of music and words. All the while reveling in New York centricity. Here's a collection conceived in Selby's Brooklyn in the bare light of the blue hour.
Available in NYC at Village Works (12 St. Mark's Place) or via various internet sources including the publisher's site