Alessandro Manzetti, No Mercy review

Written by Paula Limbaugh

No Mercy is what you’ll find here. Alessandro Manzetti assaults us with his verses and fills us with the music of his words. There is no escape, you can’t avoid being caught up in what he writes. A raw sometimes angry, sometimes sad voice with a mellowed lilt playing in the background will give you pause as you take in the music playing out on the pages of this book.

Daniele Serra’s artwork graces the cover and inside you will find illustrations from Giampaolo Frizzi. Alessandro says that he dedicates this latest book of poetry to Janis Joplin, although he was listening to Miles Davis while writing. That may seem like a bit of at odds with the styles, yet, that is how I see his work. The complexity of his subjects meshed with their small slivers of hope. There is an underlying current of despair running through these works that tie together the feelings of the used and abused.

With references to Janis Joplin and her music along with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other ghosts of the past a story unfolds. Taking us in and out of reality, Manzetti’s verses are powerful in the feelings they convey.

Janis looks up at the ceiling.

She sees a porthole that leads somewhere else,

to another dirty hotel room,

where there is a girl on the bed,

with bloody knees and a lot of bruises

all over her just preyed-upon body,

who’s breastfeeding a knife, a steel lover;

the girl’s red lips are moving, whispering something.

Is she praying or singing with me? Janis wonders.

Maybe the music changes again in that place up there

which shows that cheap hotel.

Janis comes back to the crapper and

throws in all that shit she was going to send

straight to her eager veins.

Bye-bye Paradise. Music must come first, right?

Excerpted from The Resurrection of the Pearl

As with past books of Manzetti’s, this is another that I was compelled to read straight through, his mesmerizing verses get under your skin there is No Mercy!

Available in both e-book and paperback, you can pick up your copy HERE!!

5/5