| The Book of Twos
by Joseph Amato
In fascinating detail, Amato explores how the concept of twos—contrasts, comparisons, polarities, dualities and contradictions—has been fundamental to human thought from infant development to national identities. In Amato’s telling, two becomes, literally, who we are. His wide-ranging mind ranges across history, religion, art, philosophy, war, politics, and language. The book devotes significant space to essential figures who’ve considered those topics at length: Montaigne, William James and Isaiah Berlin. Here, too, are Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Dostoevsky, and Freud. |
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| Buoyancies: A Ballast Master’s Log
by Joe Amato
“As a poet myself, I am very impressed with Joseph A. Amato’s poems. Many are keenly crafted, and some are masterful. He writes with grace and an ear for exact phrasing and metaphor. The subjects he now takes up in poetry are the ones he has long pursued in his prose works—faith, family, an exploration and understanding of place and home, war, immigrants, nature, old age and death. Focused on what is given and keeps us afloat in life, he concentrates on what he, the old ballast master, must keep in balance on a long and last journey. As always, Amato shows himself to be a writer of boundless knowledge and, more impressively, of boundless curiosity.” — Dana Yost, author of Grace and The Right Place “Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay him, Joseph A. Amato, is this: he writes poetry like someone who has never written anything else.” — Michael Palma, author of Begin in Gladness and translator of Dante’s Inferno |
