The Book of Appassionata

Collected Poems

David Citino

“His verse-crazy nun keeps professor well-supplied with poetry” —The Columbus Dispatch

“The Book of Appassionata is consistently ambitious, wide-ranging, intelligent, engaging, and surprising, teasing (sometimes taunting, seducing, lecturing, cajoling) the reader into thought, and moving him or her to admiration, laughter, and sadness. Sister Mary is a voice that can incorporate all manner of wit and wisdom; she is seemingly inexhaustible, and once you have come under her spell you don't forget her.” —Ronald Wallace, author of Time’s Fancy.

“David Citino is a much better than average poet, possibly a great one. What stands out in his Appassionata poems—aside from their beauty—is their learnedness and their humor.” —Jonathan Holden, author of Guns and Boyhood in America: A Memoir of Growing up in the 50s.

Sister Mary Appassionata has been talking herself into David Citino’s poetry collections for many years. Charming when she wants to be, pushy by nature and by vocation, determined to say what she has to say, Sister Mary has evolved into a recognized literary personality, very popular with readers of Citino’s poetry. She has now persuaded both poet and press that she is ready for her own breakthrough book, arguing that everything she has said in the past is still true and that she also has important new observations to make. Appassionata presents Sister Mary’s new poems and bring together in one volume all her poems from Citino's previous collections.

David Citino has been permitted to write a foreword in which he explains something of the relationship between himself as poet and Sister Mary as inspiration. Citino was a professor of English and the Poet Laureate of The Ohio State University. His many books of poetry include Broken Symmetry (Ohio State University Press).