In "A Hard Fall and Good Bounce" Brian D’ambrosio Delivers Raw, Lyrical Poems of Collapse and Renewal, Wry Defiance, and the Stubborn Pursuit of Hope

Santa Fe, NM, September 06, 2025 --(PR.com)-- "A Hard Fall and Good Bounce," by Brian D’Ambrosio (2025)

In his new collection A Hard Fall and Good Bounce, Brian D’Ambrosio delivers poetry that is raw, searching, and unafraid to peer into the shadows of memory, art, and modern culture. At once bruised and resilient, these poems navigate the tension between collapse and recovery, disillusionment and renewal, despair and the persistence of hope.

The book takes its name from the title poem, which serves as both compass and confession. D'Ambrosio's opening words of "A Hard Fall and Good Bounce.": “A hard fall needs / a good bounce / a bird’s eye view / of the Old Grand Opry House/ where the automatic elevator came up/ rent was low"...

Here, the fall is not only physical but cultural and emotional—a collapse of values, illusions, and ideals. The bounce is not a cure but a stubborn act of defiance, a refusal to remain broken.

Across the collection, D’Ambrosio explores a world that is at once gritty and lyrical, populated by, in his words, “connoisseurs of degenerates,” “grainy voices,” and “old hippies” who traded Woodstock ideals for corporate prescriptions. His verse cuts through nostalgia with dark wit, then tempers its edge with flashes of tenderness and persistence. In the poet's words: “A hard fall / and a good bounce / indulging passions / then decomposing / in a two-foot deep grave / on a riverbank / deep in the wilderness you love.”

A Hard Fall and Good Bounce is a meditation on what it means to endure—the indignities of aging, the betrayals of culture, the compromises of survival—and still search for the “one dream that’s still unrealized,” in his words. It’s a book that bristles at being dismissed, even as it admits its fragility.

With uniquely penetrating insight, D’Ambrosio writes for readers who crave literature that doesn’t flinch, who can appreciate poetry that is at once “literate, wryly gloomy,” in his words, and yet pulsing with a stubborn vitality.

"A Hard Fall and Good Bounce" will be available in print and digital editions in October 2025.

Publisher: Walk Through Fire Books
Contact: WalkThroughFireBooks@gmail.com