Keith Montesano was born and raised in Greenville, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and currently lives with his wife in New York, where he is a PhD Candidate in English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University.

Other poems by Keith Montesano in Verse Daily:
February 15, 2006:   "Long After the Flames" " Today, in broad daylight, I crawled through the window..."

Books by Keith Montesano:

Other poems on the web by Keith Montesano:
Three poems
Two poems
"Nocturne with Snowstorm and Power Outage"
Three poems
Two poems
Seven poems
Three poems

Keith Montesano's Blog.

About Ghost Lights:

"The poems of Ghost Lights are ambitious and multi-textured narratives and lyrics, are steeped in the lore of cinema and pop culture, and above all seem to dwell in those liminal places where adolescent longing gives way to a hard-bitten and grown-up spirit of elegy. Keith Montesano is a tough and relentless poet, whose craft smanship is as impressive as his stance. Ghost Lights is an exceptionally noteworthy first collection."
—David Wojahn

"'Where // did this world / come from, and how did it appear?' Following Larry Levis, Keith Montesano discovers those fugitive moments when one life becomes another, when our angels arrive or depart. Ghost Lights presents a difficult and necessary vigil that enlarges the body of contemporary elegy, a welcome debut."
—Jake Adam York

"Love, death, art, the love of art—glimpses flash past, shards assemble into mosaics of passion and pain, and the past won’t steer clear of present. Keith Montesano’s arresting Ghost Lights illuminates in its glow a vision of heartbreak and heroism, a rescue from the burning building and every other trap 'somewhere between innocent // and harmful.' This insightful poet imagines in lyrical beauty the terror and fascination of consuming flame."
—Lisa Lewis

"Within Ghost Lights, the striking first collection by Keith Montesano, are all the elemental obsessions: violence and fire and sex, in service of the sublime. Unafraid of ambition, free of pretension, these poems hold on to the heart and mind: they thrill, and enthrall, and, long after one has read them, they haunt."
—Paul Guest