Local Student's New Book Explores Sides of Death

The article was posted by Kaitlyn Piccoli. It was written and reported by Christine Sampson.

Whenever Steven T. Licardi tells people about his new book, Death by Active Movement: The Certainty of Life Through Poetry, he usually gets strange looks in response.

It’s almost like they are offended by the idea that someone would voluntarily choose to write an entire book exploring all sides of death, he said.

“Which is sort of one of the reasons I want to write about that, to combat the idea of it being a negative subject,” he said. “As a subject of study it’s very interesting and very illuminating for life. They go hand in hand so much. I feel like we spend so much more time not wanting to discuss it than engaging in conversations about it.”

Licardi, 24, of West Islip, will graduate this spring from Stony Brook University with a degree in psychology and philosophy, with a career destination of clinical psychology in mind. His collection consists of more than 70 poems written over the course of the past 10 years, but it reads like a story, he said. He completed the work in January.

“The book is more a relationship between life and death,” he said. “As I looked through my work, those themes came up very conspicuously.”

Let him talk a little more, and he’ll eventually take the conversation from death and life to love and beauty.

“I think people are looking for love in other people or other things, but If you look inward and take hold of any kind of flaw or mistake and recognize your own beauty, it’s an incredibly mind opening experience,” he said. “Not to sound too much like a hippie, but it’s really powerful. ... I’m of the opinion that everything is beautiful in some way or another.”

At the age of 5, Licardi was diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder – a form of autism he has since outgrown – which meant that his emotional state matured more slowly than the rest of his mind and body. He said he began using creative writing as a way to process what was happening in the world around him. But, he said, he didn’t learn of that diagnosis until he was a 21-year-old college student asking his parents about his strange childhood experiences. He said he considers it part of his identity as a writer.

“Having that childhood experience – especially the period when I didn't know what was ‘wrong’ with me – I think gave me a really unique perspective on life,” he said. “The whole reason I became an artist and eventually a writer was to combat these strange experiences I was having. Today, because I grew up with a lot of children with various diagnoses, from learning disabilities to autism to disruptive personalities to mild deafness, it’s taught me compassion and understanding, and how to see people for who they are and the beauty they possess, inside and out.”

Every other Thursday, you can catch Licardi delivering readings at Muse Exchange, a poetry reading series beginning at 8 p.m. every other Thursday at Velvet Lounge in Setauket.

Licardi points to the poem “Backseat Driver” as the flagship poem within the book. Dealing with the concept of uncertainty, its first line exclaims: “Infinite disasters linger everywhere!”

“It’s an invitation for people to take hold of that uncertainty … rather than shying away from it,” he said. “Own it, realizing that life is an uncertain thing. The only thing that never changes is change.”

Find Steven T. Licardi on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, ReverbNation, and his blog “Cross My Heart And Hope To Write.” Death by Active Movement: The Certainty of Life Through Poetry is available for $14.95 from Amazon.com.