Sightlines from the Cheap Seats is the latest book of extraordinary poetry by prize-winning poet Joseph Di Prisco. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis has praised Di Prisco's -strong and original voice.- Dean Young, Pulitzer Prize finalist, wrote that -addressing unquenchable longing and the shadows of death and failure, the lyric engines of his] poems propel us with vital combustions-; his work -is proof of the presence of a large, funny, and indefatigable spirit.-

In 1961, the Di Priscos fled Brooklyn--and the FBI. The father was a gambler and bookmaker, and agents chased him into the Long Island woods because he was implicated in police corruption. At thirty-five he escaped to a strange place called California, where his wife and two of her four sons joined him. One member of the family graduated high school, and he would make books of a different sort.

Joe didn't seem called to a life of crime, but evidence is mixed. Once he was Brother Joseph in a Catholic novitiate, but later he was named prime suspect in a racketeering investigation. During...