USED: With a Difference
By Francies Daulerio and Nick Gregorio
Published by Trident Press, 2020
78 pages, paperback
Cowritten by poet Francis Daulerio and fiction writer Nick Gregorio, With a Difference is inspired in part by Rancid and NoFX’s 2002 BYO split cover album. Gregorio has adapted ten of Daulerio’s poems into stories, and Daulerio has turned ten of Gregorio’s stories into poems. Like a vinyl record, the book must be flipped over to read both “sides.”
Praise for With a Difference...
“Gregorio and Daulerio have created a mosaic of stories and poems that are sharp in both delivery and craft. Both writers have created a rippling depth that resonates page after page, a feat they achieve through deft skill and razor-sharp honesty. The variety in form will keep you riveted, and the emotion seeping through the pages will stay with you long after you close the cover.” -Madeline Antes, author of Now We Haunt This Home Together
“The stories and poems in this collection are Polaroids that dance and shake like shadows against a backlit wall, filled with clever allegories which brighten rainy days, stretch our dream realms further, and make us question life with optimism. We learn the outsiders are observing, looking in, with hope stained on their faces.” -Elle Nash, author of Animals Eat Each Other
“With a Difference beautifully dances the line between hopeful and devastating. I was encouraged and challenged all the same. A poignant escape from my brain but a reminder of where my feet are planted.” -Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra
“The writing in With a Difference gives itself permission to wonder. One of Francis Daulerio’s poems writes of ‘how alive this all is, / and ho simple.’ By returning the gaze back to the wide-eyed, to the wonderful, to the act of taking-it-all-in, Daulerio and Gregorio center us in a vision of the world that hopes as much as it mourns, that laughs as much as it cries. This is writing thatloves the scary, silly, wild, and wonderful world we each inhabit. To read Daulerio and Gregorio is to be more fully alive with each word.” -Devin Kelly, author of In This Quiet of Night I say Amen
