Coming Soon: "Be Still and Know That I Am"

In the next few weeks, my new novel “Be Still and Know That I Am” will be released. I had a lot of fun writing this one mainly because it brings the setting back home. Whereas the first two novels (“November Rust” and “Nadería”) were set in Europe, this one is set in Queens, New York in late 1982, quite literally on the very streets I grew up on. It is not autobiographical, however it is pretty close (with some fictional smudges here and there) to how it actually was in the neighborhood I grew up in at the time. Writing it brought me back to that time and place---and sometimes not without a good laugh.

It is the story of a teenage boy, steeped in Punk Rock culture, struggling to find his place in the world amidst growing up in a place where difference isn’t something tolerated much by the majority of his peers. It is also a story about those left behind in the wake of Reagan’s “Morning in America”. It is the 1980s before it became “The 80s”. You won’t find any of the 80s nostalgia here (“Breakfast Club”, Culture Club, Madonna, “Miami Vice”, etc) since none of that had happened yet. It is set in a time between the end of the Carter-era and the very beginning of the Reagan-era, where many people who wanted to believe in the American Dream were having a hard time dealing with that dream not materializing in the way they had hoped. The economy was in shambles, unemployment was rampant and the starry-eyed optimism of the new president had not yet “trickled down” to a great many Americans. This is the climate in which our protagonist is coming of age.

Like “Nadería”, this is a multi-protagonist story, following a cast of characters through these tumultuous times when everything seemed uncertain at best. In this novel you’ll find angst ridden Punk Rockers and other alienated youth, Van Halen T-shirt wearing Camaro driving bullies and their brain dead foot soldiers, Lower East Side squatters, Alphabet City junkies, Hardcore bands and the infamous A7 club, Reagan’s promise of a “Morning in America” and those left behind who still wanted to believe it, a jaded and troubled priest, working class angst, High School Confidential, perverted and psychotic teachers and administrators---all the fun stuff. Ah, to be young again...

At it’s core this is a story about family---particularly the Italian-American family---and there is a touch (but only a very slight touch) of the history of Italian-American radicalism lurking just under the surface. I had written this novel with S.E. Hinton in mind (had she only been born in a different time and raised in a completely different environment) and this was a conscious nod to those wonderful books I read when I was a young teen just beginning to question the nature of just about everything.

The plan is to have this novel out by mid-June. I really enjoyed writing this book and I hope those of you out there who have read my two previous books will read this one as well and find enjoyment in it as well.

Old Reviews

Below are some old book reviews, all of which were for past poetry chapbooks that came out between 1996 and 2003. All of them are out of print now, being that all of them were published by very small and/or micro-presses. However, back in 2007, I collected them all in one volume called "My Arrival is Marked by Illuminating Stains", which is available via Lulu.com and Amazon.com. Just follow the link if any of these old reviews pique your interest.

Standing On Lorimer Street Awaiting Crucifixion (1996)

Alpha Beat Press, 31 Waterloo Street, New Hope, PA 18938

This is Julian Gallo's first poetry collection and let me tell you that he can write. Especially in his longer poems like "Brooklyn Rain". In part two he starts out: "I wonder how many dreams will be hung/off the old parachutte jump in Coney Island/or off the trees in the churchyard on Stuyvesant Street". That's just one nice line from this haunting and power-packed poem. It makes me feel like I know New York even though I have never lived there. It also reinforces the fact that everywhere you go people are people. They do the same horrible things in New York as they do in Mississippi. Gallo's poem "Generation Exit" is also a killer. Being a member of Generation X myself, I'm glad Gallo wrote this poem. In these poems you'll find hints of Ginsberg and it's obvious that Gallo has been influenced by the man. However Gallo definitely has his own voice here. He's building on what Ginsberg did, pushing it even farther. I strongly recommend that you buy this collection.

Dan Crocker

Ism - Issue # 2

1996

The Terror Of Your Cunt Is The Beauty Of Your Face (1999)

Black Spring Press, 1999

Julian Gallo is a writer who wields his pen like a surgeon's knife, applying and cutting words and remarks here and there. He lets loose his thoughts with a steady stream of unconscious thoughts, colorful metaphors and beautiful turns of phrases. "A Dream" reads: You are standing under an awning and the rain that is falling is made of glass. You hold out your hand to show it to me uinder the light. It glistens and I can hear it sing. They sound like a choir of angels to me; that is until you opened your palm and dropped the crystalline flakes into the gutter. Suddenly, they sound like the screams of the damned." Something is slightly amiss in Gallo's world. There is a sadness that he effectively puts into words that sing. "Just Thinking" reads: I'm lost in a Cy Twombly landscape, feeling my way through child-like freedom only to be stymied by adult realities. The trumpets are deafening and the red carpet has been unfurled before garbage. Take tentative steps, small, tentative steps, or else track dirt all the way home." You sense a loss of innocence in his poems. The title of the chapbook originally put me off but now I understand it. The terror of sexuality is overcome in the virginal youth and he seccumbs to the woman's beauty. He is no longer innocent and the world is a sadder, dirtier place. Powerful poems. Definitely check this out.

Ralph Haselmann Jr.

Blacklisted Reviews

1999

Street Gospel Mystical Intellectual Survival Codes (2000)

Budget Press, 2764 Caminito Cedros, Del Mar California 92014

2000

A small chapbook of 13 poems. Some about New York. Some about a woman. The city glimpses are more personal and sometimes less accessible to me that the ones his woman moves through in such fresh and quirky snapshots as "Interesting": She says/she likes/flowers because/they never/scream when/they die. My other favorite moment here is "Quirks": She shaves/her legs/and I/am amused/by how/she taps/the razor/against the/floor because/she thinks/it will/kill the spiders. Available from Budget Press, 2764 Caminito Cedros, Del Mar California 92014.

Michael Kriesel

Katnip Reviews

2000

Street Gospel Mystical Intellectual Survival Codes (2000)

Budget Press, 2000

Gallo's latest chapbook winds it's way through the streets of New York City, past subway stations, porno theaters and whores, lit by the Brooklyn moon. As he passes mimes, dogs digging through trash and Jehovah's Witnesses, he ruminates on the irony that confusion illuminates, the introspection one can only achieve by killing bugs, all set to Charlie Parker and Lucky Strike cigarettes. Reading this chapbook, I've been transported to a rainy New York night, smoking a cig in real time as the city passes by me in slow motion, everything translucent and unambiguous.

Johnnie B. Baker

2000

Scrape That Violin More Darkly Then Hover Like Smoke In The Air (2001)

Black Spring Press, 2001

This is a fine looking chapbook that opens up to reveal the maggots squirming around in the dirt, for the poems are unpleasant and abrasive, rarely soaring to heights of poetic beauty. This is not to say that the poems aren't good. They are. They are just dark in their own way. Julian Gallo happens to be a poet who pokes through the falsehoods of daily living to reveal the guts working beneath the surface. For this, he is a brave poet, following his own muse. His poem, "Even Pavlov Couldn't Imagine This" decribes the horror and cravings of drug addiction aptly. Powerful stuff if you like your coffee black.

Ralph Hasselman Jr.

Blacklisted Reviews

2001

Scrape That Violin More Darkly Then Hover Like Smoke In The Air (2001)

Black Spring Press, 2001

This is a decent chapbook by a writer I never heard of. It is full of a lot of free verse/free form poetry. Most of the poems are short and to the point and almost remind me of being in a dream-like state with their sometimes bizarre or off-the-wall description of things. This is from "The City": The nature of life/The city hangs there/like black cloth/awashed with pedestrian/subject matter./Why on earth are all these people milling around? If you are looking for something different, give this chapbook a try.

Cari Taplin

Katnip Reviews

2001

Impressions: "The Little Jesus of Sicily" by Fortunato Pasqualino

I absolutely loved this little book. Clocking in at just 90 pages, it is the story of a man’s recollection of his childhood memory the day of the feast of St. Joseph’s day in Butera Sicily where tradition holds that the child of the poorest of families is selected to be Jesus for the day. This particular year, just before the years of World War II, the narrator is chosen, much to the embarrassment of his father who takes the child’s selection as an insult, a signal to the rest of the village that his family is the poorest, something he denies. Nevertheless, the child takes on the role with the utmost seriousness, often questioning his parents about the scriptures and the deeds of Jesus Christ, hoping that in some way, he too could perform a miracle of his own for the celebration.

Throughout the book, the scriptures aren’t so much challenged as they are questioned, as only an innocent child could question. Taking the stories of Jesus quite literally, he often finds contradicting answers to the questions he asks, sewing confusion and at the same time wonderment. It is also a wonderful portrait of rural Sicilian life just prior to the Second World War, with its ancient traditions, belief systems and just a hint of the not always so “idyllic” surroundings.

Written in a style that recalls the best of “childhood memory” stories (i.e. “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” comes to mind) with prose that invokes poetry, myth and whimsical imagination, you can’t do wrong giving this little book a read.

Rating: * * * * *

Poem: "A Symphony of Olives"

My poem, "A Symphony of Olives" has been posted on Cher Donovan Duncombe's Poetry by Cher website. Again, a heartfelt thanks, Cher!