Walking through his parents’ home after his father’s death, Vincent Casaregola found himself pausing and reflecting upon little things, like rolled-up posters gathering dust under the bed and a tie holder nailed to the closet door.
“When you're in a heightened emotional state, things you don't usually notice will call out and stick in your mind [and] in your memory,” the St. Louis University English professor said. “They have a new meaning because they were things [your loved one] touched. They’re relics.”
In his new poetry collection “Vital Signs,” Casaregola centers everyday objects to increase awareness of the trauma that stems from illness, injury, poverty and violence.
The book includes poems such as “What the Bullet Knows,” which is written from the perspective of a bullet that's appalled by its impact in the human body.
“The idea being, let's hear what the inanimate object says about us. It's like what the alien, coming to look at us, says about our behavior,” he said. “I'm trying to use objects in a way that will really cut to the concrete moment and therefore force people beyond the superficiality of it.”
The majority of the poems in “Vital Signs” were written in the past six years, a period marked by Casaregola losing his parents, several colleagues and friends. While none of them died from the COVID-19 virus, many died during the coronavirus pandemic. In Part Four of the collection, “In the Shadow of Corona,” Casaregola confronts the traumatic aspects of that time.
He said that writing about suffering and death has helped him navigate his own grief.
“It takes time,” Casaregola said. “You cycle through this process where you never know when a certain object is going to trigger this sharp pang of loss. But there are times where, if you've started to recover, you can absorb that and begin to reflect upon it. … Reflection allows you to absorb the pain to some extent.”
The experience of sitting with and contemplating death has led Casaregola to notice a shift in his perspective on what matters and how to find meaning in the moment.
“We spend a lot of our time with people, but not really with them,” he said. “I accuse myself of this as much as anyone else: sitting there with somebody, like your spouse, and you're both on your phones. You're checking out your emails or whatever. Really being with one another is hard. It's a difficult process. Being with a person is being with their physical and emotional aches and pains.”
With the poems in “Vital Signs,” Casaregola aims to give voice to those suffering from such ailments: the patient taking their final breaths in the ICU, the pedestrian who dies after being hit by a driver and the man who perishes while seeking refuge under a bridge on a cold winter night.
“I'm trying to ask the reader to be with this person,” he said. “And I'm trying to learn to be with people more — to listen carefully and to get more observations before I make judgments … to see the complexity.”
To hear several of Casaregola's poems, his reflections on the need for awareness and empathy to address homelessness and gun violence, and lessons from pandemics throughout human history, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, or click the play button below.
Related Events
What: “Vital Signs” reading for St. Louis University Department of English’s Textual Revolutions series
When: 4 p.m. Jan. 14
Where: Room 142 in Adorjan Hall at St. Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108
What: SPOKEN reading featuring Vincent Casaregola and Matthew Scott Freeman
When: 6 p.m. Feb. 26
Where: Cafe Berlin, 220 N. 10th St., Columbia, MO 65201
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Darrious Varner is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
