Join us for the weekly High Noon speaker series as writer and St. Louis University English Professor Vincent Casaregola reads poems from his recently published collection, Vital Signs, from Finishing Line Press, as well as other works. Vital Signs is a collection of poetry that explores the experience of trauma, injury, illness, and related areas.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I, “The Site of the Trauma,” examines the physical and psychological traumas of urban stress, accidents, poverty, crime, and the associated illnesses and injuries. Part II, “Critical Cares,” focuses on the experiences of illness and health care from the perspectives of patients, family caregivers, health care workers, and others. Part III, “The Case History Monologues,” gives voice to those who suffer illness, especially mental illness, and the painful consequences that may come from such suffering. Finally, Part IV, “In the Shadow of Corona,” confronts the many traumatic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the new immediacy of dealing with death and loss both near and far.
Together, these clusters of poems present a range of perspectives on the experience of illness/injury, health care, loss, and grieving, all of which are “vital signs” of the current condition of our culture. Outside of this collection, Casaregola’s poem, “Elephant in the Room,” took second place at this year’s Wednesday Club of St. Louis poetry competition, and his poem “Futures Foretold from within Small Boxes” won an Editor’s Choice award from the journal Shelia-Na-Gig online, subsequently nominated by them for a Best of the Net award.
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, including 2River, The Bellevue Literary Review, Blood and Thunder, The Closed Eye Open, Dappled Things, The Examined Life, The Healing Muse, Lifelines, Natural Bridge, Please See Me, WLA, Work, and The Write Launch. He has also published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review.
