Only Peter Fortunato could have written this collection of resonant poems: five connected stories in lyrical forms. Drawing on his experience as a hypnotherapist, Buddhist practitioner, and shaman, he has created characters that include the best-selling novelist, Anna Giff, who wakes up blind one morning and during psychoanalysis becomes obsessed with her doctor, Edwin Savage—the psychiatrist who later reveals some of his own secrets in excerpts from his notebooks. Savage not only shares his thoughts about Ms. Giff, but also about his encounter with the runaway fiancé who’s broken the heart of Proto King, a software engineer who fancies himself a cyber-pirate: one who’s created a code to play any video game for free. And the journalist who’s published an “inner-view” with Anna Giff—he turns up in the doctor’s consulting room as well. In other poems we learn about the visionary Euclid, who mentored young Edwin Savage, and the Italian TV celebrity Nico Buonparoli, a buffoon whose advice is surprisingly wise. Counterparts is unlike any other book of poetry by Peter Fortunato, and it establishes itself among the most innovative collections of recent times.
About the Author
Peter Fortunato has published several poetry collections, most recently, World Headquarters, and a novel, Carnevale, about growing up as an Italian American artist in the Mid-Hudson Valley. His memoir, Desert Wind: My Life in Qatar (Cayuga Lake Books) is an intimate account of his four years teaching writing, literature and psychology at Weill Cornell Medicine in Doha, Qatar. Before retiring from academia, he taught for many years at Cornell University and at Ithaca College. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was awarded the Randall Jarrell Fellowship, and from Cornell, a BA in English. Among his honors are the Emily Dickinson Prize of the Poetry Society of America, a Pablo Neruda Prize from the Oklahoma Arts Council, and a Yeats Poetry Prize from the WB Yeats Society of NY. Peter Fortunato has been a student of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for more than 50 years, as well as an artist and practitioner of complementary alternative medicine. He maintains a private counseling practice specializing in hypnotherapy and shamanism where he lives in Ithaca, New York.
