Poetry, great connector that it is, knows no walls or bars or fetters or strangers. By its very nature, it “makes things,” so that by the time a poem is crafted or read or heard, something has shifted—whether perspective, intention, person, or the earth’s rotation, it is an act that is especially significant for the poet and his/her/their reader.
FEATURED POEMS
"Speak Poetry," poets.org & american poets, Fall/Winter 2022 "To want the wide American earth," KALW Public Radio & Cultural Daily, September 19, 2022 "Martial Law Babies," 100 Pink Poems anthology & Cultural Daily, September 19, 2022 "There are no kings in America," poets.org & Vox Populi, July 4, 2022 "Take Heart," SF Chronicle, Pacifica Tribune, HMB Review, April 4, 2022 "I Am, Villanelle," Speak Poetry & The Lake County Bloom, March 24, 2022 "Tree Lighting at Fremont Park in the Second Year of the Pandemic," InMenlo, December 11, 2021 "Tanaga," Poetry Magazine/Poetry Foundation, July/August 2021 "Legacy," poets.org & Marsh Hawk Press Review, Spring 2021 "Haint Blue," poets.org & San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 2020 "A Short History of Journey," poets.org & SFPL, May 16, 2020 "In Half Moon Bay," The Banyan Review, Spring 2020 & HMB Review, January 25, 2023 "Touch-me-not" and "Ghazal for George," The Nonconformist Magazine, 2019 "This Faith We Sing," FORusa, November 2020
ARTICLES & ESSAYS
"How to be radical on Women's Equality Day," The Daily Journal, Aug 2022 "Dear Poet 2022," poets.org, June 2022 "State of poetry in the county," The Daily Journal, March 2022 "Poetry at Maguire Facility," Project Read, 2020 "Barbara Jane Reyes, Angela Narciso Torres, and Ivy Alvarez: Masters of Technique and Craft," allpinayeverything, Oct 9, 2018 "Empires and Falling Skies," Galatea Resurrects, April 2018 "Lolo Claudio in Colorado," Positively Filipino, June 2014
BOOKS & CHAPBOOKS
THE PINK HOUSE OF PURPLE YAM PRESERVES & OTHER POEMS
Publisher: Our Own Voice & Little Dove Books
Release Date: October 2018
ISBN: 978-1-7323025-3-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947614
Pages: 94
Distributors: Eastwind Books of Berkeley, Bookshop, and others.
Steeped in histories and cartographies, Aileen I. Cassinetto’s The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems transports you into another realm. Lyrical and thoughtful juxtaposition, Cassinetto’s poems delve into pasts threading them together into a majestic tapestry. The pink house representing childhood memories and worldly travels. The purple jam or ube as they call it in the Philippines is a delicacy unto its own. Cassinetto’s collection comprises of finely crafted poems, prose and essays, which weaves a story of migration into earthly and divine dominions.
—Cristina Querrer, author of By Astrolabes & Constellations and The Art of Exporting
What a marvelous poetic skill Cassinetto has in this 102 page soft cover tome… Included in this collection is a section of unfinished prose and a section of selected essays. Cassinetto brings her amazing control of language to both these sections.
—Review in North of Oxford by Lynette G. Esposito
Her poetry and prose teem with life and life-giving water.
—Review in Halo-Halo by Neil Leadbeater
TRAJE DE BODA (Meritage Press, 2010)
Aileen [Cassinetto]’s first book is a charmer more than a disarmer of the complicated relationships between men and women, mothers and daughters, or colonized and colonizer. The intensity of her voice is not unlike the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral with llantos like these: “I say it’s all right./Yes, if I ever lose my mouth,” and “My old same hides/her face behind a fan.” traje de boda belongs on any serious bookshelf of contemporary poetry. —Nick Carbó, author of Chinese, Japanese, What are These?
This collection is a mosaic shaped into an intriguing tapestry by a fearless literary pasticheuse. —Albert B. Casuga (Galatea Resurrects, December 2010)
TWEET (Moria Books/Locofo Chaps, 2017)
Aileen Cassinetto’s “Tweet,” which is as playful and wry in tone as we wish Twitter still was (this tone is echoed by the book’s childlike, almost Comic Sans typeface), explores quite seriously the fact and history of diplomatic speech as (a kind of) poetry. —Chad Felix (Melville House, July 2017)
This is a topical collection for dispiriting times… By taking the conceptual angle with this chapbook, Cassinetto has succeeded in expanding poetry’s remit in both form and content. An exhilarating encounter. —Andrew Taylor (Ofi Press Issue 54, July 2017)
B & O BLUES (Moria Books/Locofo Chaps, 2017)
This directional chaos is poetics in itself, and the poet does a brilliant job in capturing the zeitgeist of the turn of the century. —M. Earl Smith (Galatea Resurrects, May 2017)
THE ART OF SALAMAT (Moria Books/Locofo Chaps, 2017)
Aileen Cassinetto 