Burnt Fields Under Snow

Burnt Fields Under Snow is a devastatingly earnest meditation on memory, reorientation, and the strange warmth of grief. Pagano conjures the afterlives of war, the phantom limbs of home, and the spectral presences that haunt ordinary days. Whether tracing familial roots through Italian crypts and fog-laced mountains, or reconstructing post-9/11 consciousness through garden scenes, these poems offer formal elegance and spiritual openness. The poet, equipped with a diarist's intimacy and an archivist's precision, crafts each line like a footprint disappearing under snowfall, each image a relic exhumed from silence. Burnt Fields Under Snow offers readers a news of being, through love, nature, and connection.

-Sean Cho A., Editor-in-Chief, The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought

Poetry is the noblest expression of a soul, and when you encounter it, you're immediately captivated. Richard Pagano's poems reach the reader's heart with ease; his verses flow like clear water and quench the thirst of anyone who enters his magical world of poetry and true life. Happy reading!

-Lucia Gaeta, Presidente e Fondatrice di ACIPeA (Associazione Culturale Italiana Poeti e Artisti)

As a contemporary Harlequin, Pagano conjures up a magical year in Italy alongside his artist wife, Nancy. In exploring his heritage, the stigmata of a saint, and the shock of 9/11, he creates a mosaic of unforgettable images all the while knowing that towers fall, cats catch mice, and sand castles wash away. Details chosen with careful craft, entice you to join the landscape, and be captivated by this skillful magician.

-Sara Ingram, author, Sounds of House and Wood

As Richard Pagano says in Burnt Fields Under Snow, "revelation comes in moments," and this work is fully sensitized to these moments. Whether contemplating his ancestral landscape, or working on framing his wife's paintings, over and over he gives us his complete response: the visible, the audible, the emotional. We feel the moment as he does. Read this collection to understand what it is to welcome all one's perceptions and to come away with expanded reality.

-Susan Parker, artist and educator