You never know what he’ll do next.”[2] Trigilio's innovative incorporation of historical research in his poems has made him a significant figure in contemporary documentary poetry.
You feel you are as close as possible to actual events.”[4] Trigilio has earned acclaim for his inventive work with popular culture, autobiography, and poetic form—most notably in his multivolume epic poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood).
For this ongoing project begun in 2011, Trigilio is re-watching every episode of the 1960s gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, which he saw every afternoon with his mother when he was a small child.
Maggie Millner has praised the project as Trigilio's “effort to face his demons, compose his memoirs, and keep alive the memory of his mother—all the while combining elements of kitsch, ekphrasis, and new formalism.”[5] Joe Milazzo commends the project as a contemporary example of the Italian concept of sprezzatura, first coined in 1528 by Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier and defined by Milazzo as the “nonchalant performance of virtuosity.”[6] The third volume in the series, Ghosts of the Upper Floor, was published by BlazeVOX in 2019.
From 2004 to 2015, Court Green was published in conjunction with Columbia College, and twelve issues of the magazine appeared during that time.