Chasing The Muse
Since 1987

Jumping Off the Train

by Donna Pucciani

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Jumping Off the Train

by Donna Pucciani

reviewed by Beth Staas

In Jumping Off the Train (her second book of poetry), Donna Pucciani, teacher and musician, touches all of the senses, gently nudging a response from the reader as her stories, pictures and observations take form.

What is a poem? With Pucciani, there is never any question. It’s the way the lines are arranged on the page. It’s the commanding imagery that can make you get goose bumps up and down the arm or pastes your tongue against the roof of the mouth. It’s her sly humor, never raucous or angry, as she observes the human condition. She holds up a verbal mirror that displays life’s foibles that generates a wistful smile or a catch in the throat.

I’ve seen her in the audience at readings where she taps out the rhythm of a piece or stares at the ceiling, waiting for each of the five senses to be addressed. Yet her own technical skill is muted. Like prose, there is a beginning, middle and end. You know where the poem is going and arrive at the end knowing where you’ve been, although its perceptions are always new and fresh.

If you think poetry has to be obscure or angry, stick with T.S. Eliot or Lawrence Ferlinghetti. But if your personal library includes books by Billy Collins and Wislawa Szymborska (Nobel Prize winner), you will find Donna Pucciani’s writing a wonderful addition.

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Beth Staas has been published in more than two-dozen periodicals with national circulation. Her novels, The Two Percent Miracle, and An Audience of One, published by Denlinger's Ltd. are currently available on the Internet at Amazon.com and through her website at www.bethstaas.com She has a bachelor's degree in psychology, a master's in English and has taught at the college level for twenty years. Currently she is president of Chicago's Poets and Patrons and a contributing editor to www.COMBAT.ws