Where Angels Arch Their Backs and Dogs Pass Through: Poems of India and Nepal, 2010-2011
by Richard Milazzo.

With a Romanian translation by Razvan Hotaranu.
First edition paperback:  July 2012.
160 pages, with a black and white photograph of the author, Old Fruit Market, Mumbai (Bombay), India, January 13, 2011, by Joy L. Glass on the frontispieces, and color photographic illustrations on the cover by the author.
8 x 5.75 in., printed, sewn and bound in Romania.
ISBN:  978-606-8229-48-5.
Published by Scrisul Romanesc, Craiova, Romania, 2010.

RETAIL PRICE: $40.00 (includes postage and handling)

Where Angels Arch Their Backs and Dogs Pass Through: Poems of India and Nepal, 2010-2011 by Richard Milazzo was written mostly in India and Nepal and published in Romania with Scrisul Romanesc.  There are also in this volume poems written in Paris, Milan, Florence, and Venice.  The titles of the poems in Where Angels Arch Their Backs and Dogs Pass Through give us some idea of the book’s scope:  “Arjuna,” “Chandni Chowk,” “Humayun’s Tomb,” “Qutab Minar,” “Hallucination in Kathmandu,” “Bhaktapur,” “Prayag Ghat,” “Varanesi,” “At the Cremation Ghat,” “Queen Elizabeth’s Suite,” “Khajuraho,” “The Palace of One Night,” “Agra Fort,” “In the Shadow of the Taj Mahal,” “The Palace of Wind,” “Dream of the Great Sundial,” “Kali,” “Jain Temples,” “Udaipur,” “Bombay.”

The poet brings his unique form of narrative lyricism to his travels through this vast and complex country.  And he manages as always to find not only in the architectural monuments but in the history of these stones erotic predicates:  “But what a night it was! / Moon’s first glimmer of her, / through a latticed stone screen, her skin, / sandstone polished to a white glow! // All precious stones / cast their designs upon her – / chiefly lapis lazuli and turquoise, / with a tremulous gold entablature! // And her cupolas - Islamic and Hindu, / smooth and ribbed, so delicate and graceful –, / it was as if her walls had become / swirls of pure deity!”

It is difficult to call this writer an American poet, given not only the content of his work but his aversion to all things academic and culturally predetermined. It should surprise no one that after publishing fifteen books of poetry in Italy, Serbia, Romania, and Japan, in the course of twenty years, he is still without an American publisher.  Here is a global poet who has yet to publish a single book of poetry in his own country!