Chris Abbate is the author of Talk About God (Main Street Rag, 2017) and Words for Flying (FutureCycle Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Connecticut River Review, Cider Press Review, and Comstock Review. He is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize, has been nominated for a Best of the Net award, and has received awards in the Nazim Hikmet and North Carolina Poetry Society poetry contests.

Books by Chris Abbate:

Other poems on the web by Chris Abbate:
Five poems
"Cleanliness"
"God, Bowling"
"Learning to Dunk"
"Hartford, 1947"
"Ode To A Couch"

Chris Abbate's Website.

About Talk About God:

"God is the glue for connection and mystery in Chris Abbate's Talk About God, a masterful debut collection. These poems are about his Catholic childhood, the yearning to break away from convention and the unyielding need for patterns to manage the unforgiving nature of life. Yet, most of all, these poems speak of the connections between fathers and sons, husbands and wives (‘things don't always have to mean something else; / it is okay for something to be as it is, / like two people sharing a bed /lying back to back between contented exhalations.'), and friends and neighbors. Abbate explores the chaos of adolescence and many years later, reflects on the breakup of his parents' over fifty-year marriage through the exacting lens of ritual and geometry (‘Let's say love / is a braiding of synapses, / an orgy of neurons, / and marriage / is a chemistry experiment / in need of a slight tweak /every decade or so.') with carefully nuanced images that earn every bit of their screen time. Every poem in Talk About God reminds you to feel gratitude for the beauty of the present moment and not to forget how you can create a joyous and meaningful life."
—Alice Osborn