If some paintings can be more painterly than others, some language can be more linguistic. Aaron Lelito’s poems in The Half Turn fall into this category. They beg to be read aloud, moved—even masticated—through the mouth and the teeth. With visual half-rhymes, tongue-twisting consonance, and rhythmic slant rhymes, they reveal, almost musically, their meanings filled with love-losing and tension: between the legible and the unreadable, beginnings and ends, existence and decay. Language, nature, time, and faith become intertwined through spiraling metaphors. We encounter saints and ghosts, malleable moons and microbes, rooftop bars and noble oceans: the collection careens between the material and the abstract, the quotidian and the sacred, completing its own “half turn / toward resonance, / half counter turn / toward dissonance.” Read these poems for a dizzying yet pensive contemplation of longing and leaving on a simultaneously cosmic and human scale.
—Anna Genevieve Winham, Editor in Chief of Passengers Journal and Development Director for the Poetry Society of New York
If you like your poetry with a touch of Zen and a unique modern voice, Aaron Lelito is your man!
—Daniele Bolelli, author and host of The Drunken Taoist and History on Fire podcasts
While reading The Half Turn by Aaron Lelito, I felt as though I was gifted with a rare glimpse into the process of healing and self-discovery grounded in the exploration of nature. Sitting with each poem in quiet contemplation, I found myself observing the slow realizations that come when one intentionally works with art and nature to find meaning in the chaos of life, love, and loss. The poems bring order to the unknown by piecing together memories and tracing them through the artistic process of writing poetry, giving us some hope within life’s challenges.
—Brooke Mellen, Founder of Cultured Forest
Lovely. Absolute.
—Erica Avey, Editor of SPECTRA Poets