the heart is an undertaker bee
MIDDLE CREEK PUBLISHING 2023

“Brice Maiurro shares the truths one can find if one looks closely. In The Heart is an Undertaker Bee, nature is venerated. Each voice is soft, gentle, respectful, and humble. These poems do not exploit nature as a subject. They acknowledge our place within the living world, “We are still under the tree,/ beneath the everything.” There is wisdom in these poems, like the saguaros who “…hold their arms/ straight up towards/ the open sky—/ surrender/ in reverence/ to one/ another. “

—Huascar Medina, Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus, author of Un Mango Grows in Kansas
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“It is truly astonishing that a man who co-created an open mic named Punketry and led millions of people in organized howling could write poetry that is so good at capturing the quiet moments. Brice Maiurro’s new collection is a testament to a life spent listening, sitting with the disaster while trying to make sense of it, it is a still pond reflecting back a forest fire. A sometimes-manic book filled with inconsiderate pop stars, countless trees, the occasional ghost, Congress Park and Colfax, talking animals, unanswerable questions, astral projection, ambitious flowers, dirt, hope, grief, and most importantly and undeniably—love. Not that generic love, the good honest blue-collar stuff. It’s good poetry for the people, and it makes Denver Poetry proud.”

—Ken Arkind author of Coyotes and Denver

““I’m just so happy to see something alive,” Maiurro writes, narrowly breaking the fourth wall as I read this collection, thinking the same. Black Mountain and Jack Spicer would be proud.”

—Barracuda Guarisco, author of It’s Not a Lie If You Believe It (Voice Lux Press)

“Brice Maiurro’s new collection, The Heart Is An Undertaker Bee, is an encapsulation of escapable moments through this mortal coil, and a return on togetherness as loss. Maiurro gives us a mirror as words to enter a tangling place of living as long as trees extend their branches reaching high always dancing. There is the remembrance, the quaking, the sound of the bang, the music, the choir of hands, bringing us to an echo of sound and of motion, an instance that places us in each of these poems. The shapes of things that make these poems tether through time and age to remember the womb of the world.

—Crisosto Apache, author of Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publishing)

“”Take care of your grief,” poet Brice Maiurro thoughtfully tells the reader towards the end of his fourth poetry collection The Heart is An Undertaker Bee. By that point the poet has explored the relationship between interior and exterior life, humanity’s relationship with nature (from trees, lakes, cacti, and “mountains named after terrible men”), human beings’ relationships with one another (of particular note is the moving love poem “Under the Tree, Beneath the Everything), and human days being boxed onto calendars. In this vivid collection, Maiurro explores many poetic forms and dimensions of human experience. His vulnerability to walk both up and down the stairs within himself (see “Sound Reverberated Off of Mountains”) and share what he finds is inspiration for us all to be brave enough to keep on living and take care of ourselves (and each other) along the way.”

—Cristina A. Bejan, author of the Award-Winning Green Horses on the Walls

CLOWN SINGING OPERA
CHAPBOOK // 2023

Clown Singing Opera is a chapbook collecting some of Brice Maiurro’s most weirdo poems & short fictions.

HERO VICTIM VILLAIN
STUBBORN MULE PRESS // 2019

“Maiurro spills his mind onto the page with fervent energy, chasing after each notion through a series of rabbit holes as though it may never run its course. In his characteristic narrative prose style, he brings together a seemingly paradoxical combination of grim confessionalism and romantic idealism while inhabiting a surrealist world–a recognizable-yet-dreamlike corner booth of Denver, Colorado, where canaries swallow fire and poets swallow cities, where cities are moving, breathing characters comprised of the people who reside in them, and where people can make their blood stand still if they follow his directions…Through all of this abstraction, metacommentary, and philosophical curiosity, Maiurro remains a poet of the people, never straying into academic or literary pretense. Instead, he speaks onto the page like a punk-themed poetry night microphone for anyone willing to listen. All told, these poems make for an imaginative and readable collection by a storyteller who captivates readers whether they consider themselves fans of poetry or not.”
—Tim Becker, Author of Sorrow Birds and New York City Bones

STUPID FLOWERS
PUNCH DRUNK PRESS // 2017

“Ah, I absolutely loved this book. Halfway through I forced myself to slow down so I could savor each poem. His words were full of humor and longing and raw emotion. I will absolutely be re-reading this one.”

—Goodreads Review