Deep Code

John Coletti is the author of the book Mum Halo (2010) and the chapbooks Same Enemy Rainbow (2008) and Physical Kind (2005). With Anselm Berrigan, he is the author of the limited edition Skasers (2012). As an undergraduate at Columbia University, he studied poetry with Kenneth Koch and Ron Padgett. He has served as editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and co-edits Open 24 Hours Press with poet Greg Fuchs. Other projects include a collaborative print with artist Kiki Smith, a chapbook collaboration with Shana Moulton, and a libretto for Excelsior (Caught: The Wide Open), an opera composed by Caleb Burhans commissioned by Chicago's Fifth House Ensemble and premiering in 2013.

"Disjunction and parataxis are at a premium here, each line its own thing, sometimes even each word ... Or rather, almost its own thing, because after all there remains a wisp of a rhythm that orients each line to the others, however loosely-a last hint of innate sensibility ... It would take something like the physics that describes the path of a stone skipping across the surface of a pond to calculate the pattern formed by the points this sensation touches before sinking away, lost. And that is where what we usually call meaning occurs, in Coletti's poems: totally submerged, only its ripples still visible."-Barry Schwabsky, Hyperallergic "Deep Code is like the skyhook of poetry. The poems are quick, tight, surprising, and unstoppable. The poems are beautiful to watch as they move across the page----this is a book of poems that is certainly built to last, all encompassing and omni-relevant in their portraiture."----Erika Kaufman, Poetry Project Newsletter "Deep Code finds Coletti at the height of his artistic project, in full command--or embrace--of the unruliness of language."--American Poets "The poems in Deep Code continue to challenge my expectations and enlarge the parameters of my reading ... I trust Coletti in areas where my own comfort is absent in part because of my reading of a poet like [Frank] O'Hara over the years. One classic New Yorker has led me to embrace the extravagances of another New Yorker from out my own generation ... On a couch in eternity, O'Hara and Coletti will hopefully one day meet."----Patrick James Dunagan, Entropy "A sonic surrealist typewriter clacks in rhythm across Colletti's brow. Read it in his sweet-eye glance: poetry grams of tender touch. Tuff cookie meat! & mystery. Shit is electric wire awesome stuff."----Thurston Moore "In Deep Code, we walk hand-in-hand with a street smart and tenderhearted city boy who, wanting "ALLLLLLL the experience", is immersed and so immerses the reader in contemporary cacophonies where "things collide" at a pace both expansive and measured. John Coletti expertly props our ears to what's striking and dare I say beautiful in the terrifying realities of this world. This book is "at ease / with not being at ease" and that, for me, is a guidepost. Reading Deep Code is like eating some kind of perfected pop rocks--all the colorful action, and just as true, but without the saccharine hangover."----Alli Warren "Deep Code is a theory of expressive subterfuge performed as piecemeal continuities. Its poems are distressed & fine like all the chances we forget we're free to make for one another, edged to mellow like the contours of a party felt in general & intimate perception."--Dana Ward