About
Frank Montesonti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope, Winner of the 2011 Barrow Street Book Prize chosen by D.A. Powell, and the book of erasure, Hope Tree (How To Prune Fruit Trees) by Black Lawrence Press. He is also author of the chapbooks A Civic Pageant and Arts Grant. His poems have appeared in journals such as Tin House, AQR, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, and Poems and Plays, among many others. He lives in Los Angeles and is the lead faculty of the MFA program at National University.
Frank Montesonti 
I greatly enjoyed your reading at Boxcar Books in Bloomington yesterday and am enjoying “Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope”.
Thank you for your permission to print one of your poems on my blog (I chose “Piranha”). If you’d like to check out the post, you can find it here –
http://writingforfoodinindy.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/saudi-arabia-arts-perspective-and-piranha/
I wish you well in your writing career and look forward to reading more of your work as it emerges.
Today, I stopped in at a historic cemetery in Madison WI and completed a self guided walking tour. Along the way, we stopped at one of those family plot benches that are frequent in cemeteries of 19th century and my friend read a poem to me from a book he had just purchased for a nickel from Saint Vincent de Paul’s the day before. It was your poem: Best Deaths. Thank you ; I enjoyed it completely. It was the right sentiment, pace, and mood for the moment.