inscribed by author

Vietnam Veteran. He was editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology from 2010 thru 2012, has participated in the ROAR program, started by outgoing poet laureate CB Follett, reading poetry to residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Marin County, CA in 2013 for a two-year term. Since 1987 he has lived in Fairfax,


review by goodreads.com:
"The bio in Render doesn’t mention military service, but Zaccardi’s poems do. I wouldn’t call them “war poems”; rather, these poems appear early in the collection, making war an early experience that the narrator responds to. The title poem says, “What takes away, gives” (60). Is this something war taught the veteran? As I think about the veterans in my life, I think about simplicity of the ultimate sacrifice and the difficulty of surviving.
Zaccardi’s book is not about transcending but surviving a “rotten war” without letting the touch of rot destroy the veteran (5). Throughout the collection he plays with the words “lessen” and “lesson,” homonyms, to be sure, but also synonyms if the loser observes not only what is lost but what takes its place and how whatever appears lost is transformed (1, 10, 13, 47, 71).
One technique Zaccardi employs is the negated image (Cesmat). At least since Shakespeare noted that his mistress’ eyes were nothing like the sun, poets have used negating descriptions come as close as possible to what they were attempting to say. Zaccardi occasionally uses a negated image where others might have willfully forgotten for reasons self-defense."