All I Have Learned Is Where I Have Been, Joe Fiorito’s second collection, establishes him as the preeminent chronicler of people in extremis. Drawing on the precison and unsentimentality that have become hallmarks of his poetry, Fiorito creates uncompromising mini-narratives about addiction, failed rehabs, incarceration, demeaning jobs, and homelessness; much of it derived from nearly two decades spent as a newspaper columnist covering daily life on Toronto’s streets. In poem after poem, Fiorito’s exact word choices, cold-eyed details, and crisp internal rhymes mete out moments both beautiful and harrowing: “her little finger curls a bit/she cut a tendon when she slit/ her wrist; she’d clenched/ her fist.”
- ISBN10 1550655469
- ISBN13 9781550655469
- Publish Date 1 September 2020
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint Vehicule Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 76
- Language English