Last Bacchanale

Welcome to the 42nd collection of poems by George Wallace, Whitmanian, bold, free-spirited and compassionate, world-wide in scope and intimate in vision. Poetry that is by turns DIonysian, post-Dionysian, and deeply transactional; placid as milk, overwhelming as a five-alarm fire. Wallace continues to defy the limitations of time and human energy. His is a poetry of dazzling range and tone, a self-declared poet of gravediggers and elusive women, his boots trampling through Eden’s gate and out into worlds known and unknown. These are the poems of an icon-buster and disobedient soldier. His heart is his weapon, he opens up old wounds and pours elixir in, tears innocence out of the womb and nurses it into being as if they were children of his own. 'I am the ointment and the cure, friend to wild stallions and the downtrodden. I return life to uninhabitable regions and spread lavishly across earth. And my tongue is sweet, sweet! as the dagger of dawn over ruined cities.George Wallace is Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, first poet laureate of Suffolk County, LI NY and author of 40 books and chapbooks of poetry, published in the US, UK, Italy, Macedonia and India. A prominent figure on the NYC poetry performance scene, he travels internationally to perform, lead writing workshops, and lecture on literary topics. A former student of W.D. Snodgrass (BA, Syracuse U) and Marvin Bell (MFA, Pacific U), he teaches writing at Pace University (NYC), and has done research residencies at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC. He has worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer, health care administrator, community organizer, community journalist, active duty medical military officer and local historian. His work is collected at the Special Sections Collection, LI Studies Institute, Hofstra University. George is editor of Poetrybay.com, co-editor of Great Weather for Media, and editor of Long Island Quarterly and 'Walt’s Corner,' a weekly poetry column in The Long Islander, a community newspaper founded by Walt Whitman in 1838. He is editor of the 2022 Blue Light Press Anthology FROM THE INSIDE: NYC through the eyes of the poets who live here.