Video of Lawrence Ferlinghetti Reading

A video from youtube of Ferlinghetti reading his poetry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrHv6IASWQ4

Video of Gregory Corso reading his poem “Marriage.”

A video from youtube of Gregory Corso reading his poem “Marriage:”

Poem: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

the reed of a loom
the guideways, of a loom, or

when suddenly, when suddenly
this is spring, and this is summer

and this, this is open sky.
the birds resemble a man.

dandelion. giddying.
budded. spree.

roundly, with joy
for nothing and for everything

the day, with my own heart
too soon, arrayed. this haste

this pasturing. this coffee companion.
this cup. this yellow sky

reprinted w/ permission from The Valise by Gregory Vincent St Thomasino -2012

Review of Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s The Place I Call Home

“The Place I Call Home”

A Spiritual Landmark (and a Glimpse at Horror)

By Emily Vogel

Poetry Editor

Typically, when we think of “place” we consider first its physical geography, what exists in its proximity and what best describes its coordinates and physical dimensions. To consider that a “place,” perhaps besides being a physical location, is also a dimension of the memory, a particular habitat of the mind and heart which cannot be drawn on a map, suggests a type of vault of emotional reserve that can best be channeled through the medium of poetry. Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s book of poems, “The Place I Call Home” (forthcoming from NYQ Books in September) easily taps into this dimension, and while the landmarks that might be mentioned in many of the poems are recognizable as physical realities, there are without doubt other “spiritual landmarks” which carry the reader through all fifty-two poems so that we’re not only in a city in New Jersey, but also journeying through the story of the “self,” which has its own “emotional coordinates,” in its own right.

Gillan succeeds in constructing the “herstory” of an Italian immigrant girl. Her work is honest and bears the integrity of a woman/narrator we’d all like to sit down with and have four o’clock tea (or espresso), tell stories, and exchange matters of heart. She recalls the details of her growing up with a sense of real specificity and awareness. While reading the book the first time, I received what I’m used to after reading the last line of a really good poem or novel: the chills – what I’ve come to know as a brush with the Holy Spirit. It is the kind of physical sensation which demands you just appreciate the beauty of the poem without the need to examine it immediately for its deeper meanings with an “intellectual” ear.

The deeper meanings of her poems resonate viscerally, as opposed to the type of poems which beg we impose the intellect, eviscerate them of their emotional impact, and analyze them until it’s no longer the poems that we appreciate. Gillan’s poems are easy to appreciate, and require no second-guessing or deconstructive examination beyond what they attest. She does not cloak by gestures of language that leave us confused and dissatisfied, wondering why someone just doesn’t tell us a story we can identify as a story. In this book of poems, she has opened the vault of the self, with all its shame, joy, passion, triumph and discovery, that anyone would argue requires a certain kind of courage that many poets on the current poetry scene are not willing to employ.

My favorite poem in the collection is one which recalls a dream (In My Dream, The Light). The poem’s vivid imagery succeeds in suggesting a kind of horror story: “someone with huge dark circled eyes and a bright/red gash of a mouth and huge stitches bisecting/her face and body, as though someone had cut her/in half and sewn her back together, and the dishes/on the table are full of severed heads and pulsing/hearts.” The shock of these images helps us to see the difference between the narrator of the conscious world and the Gillan of subconscious magnitudes. Perhaps the real essences of our truths are revealed in dreams? In narratives over which we have no dominion or control?

While we are given a long glimpse of Gillan’s childhood and early relationships in the first half of the book, much of the poems on the topic of her late husband are in the latter half of the book. These poems certainly suggest a shift, both in perspective and in sentiment. More anger and grief become the focus, yet with a real sense of maturity, integrity, and originality. These poems reveal details that are not always pretty: “even your face/looks delicate, the skin drawn/so tightly over the bones of your head that it’s almost transparent,/your neck so thin it cannot support your head” (The Other Night, You Came Home), and “There is no medicine/for the sound guilt makes at 3 am.” (How Do I Pack Up the House of My Life?).

There is much more to Gillan’s poems than simply well-crafted stories about life. What becomes evident in many of the poems in this collection is the portrait of the narrator’s fear, in the same way a child might tremble in her bedroom at night when the shadow cast on the wall by the lamp becomes a terrible monster – when perfectly ordinary images are transformed into something violent. In the latter half of this book, the narrator is revealed as someone who is confronting these horrors and conciliating with them. Perhaps the Gillan we know of in the poems is not only haunted by the ghosts of childhood, her late husband and dreams, but dares to resurrect these ghosts and render them remarkable aspects of the self. “The Place I Call Home” is truly a work of literary merit. Look forward to its release in September: New York Quarterly Books, www. nyqbooks.org

http://ragazine.cc/2012/06/gillan-book-review/

The Place I Call Home

NYQ Books, ISBN: 978-1-935520-67-2

See also, http://www.mariagillan.com/

Poem: Confession by Susan Gerardi Bello

I wasn’t there, here. I was asleep
in an apartment in Santa Monica.

I saw it on TV, didn’t smell the smoke,
flee over the bridge. I moved back a year later,

rented a row house in Brooklyn
from a man who lost his son in the North Tower.

When I moved in, I was told his son had lived
in the same house with friends, had stained

the dark wood in the living room. I was told
I could paint anything, except that dark wood.

Some nights when it was late and I climbed
the creaky stairs to bed, I’d listen for his son,
but all I ever heard were my feet on the floorboards.

Three Figs – a poem by Maria Fama

THREE FIGS

Direct from the store on a hot July morning

you bound brilliant and sunny through the front door

in your hands

three green plump figs

wrapped in leaves

the first of the season

brought into the grocery store from a neighbor’s tree

It’s still too soon for our backyard tree

to bear its large purple figs we will pick in September

You in the yellow Italian soccer shirt, I in the matching blue

delighted with the figs and each other

we laugh as though we still were the teenagers

we were when we first met

You say

as long as we are together

we will always be fifteen

It is high summer now in a light filled dining room

we savor and share three green figs on two china plates.

Reprinted by permission of Maria Fama

Bio of Maria Fama’

Maria Fama’ lives and works in Philadelphia. She is the author of four books of poetry. Her most recent book, Looking for Cover, was published by Bordighera Press.

Mary Bucci Bush’s novel Sweet Hope – Winner or Finalist in 3 Awards

Mary Bucci Bush’s novel Sweet Hope has recently been named a winner or finalist in three awards: 1. Winner: Working Class Studies Association’s Tillie Olsen Award for Published Book 2.“Finalist”: Binghamton University’s John Gardner Book Award (they will note this on announcement flyers & on their website. (Winner: Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling).
3.“Finalist”: 2012 Paterson Fiction Prize. (Winner: Steve Almond’s God Bless American: Stories).

Sweet Hope (Prose Series)
Sweet Hope is a novel about the friendship between two families, one Black and one Italian, living and working together on a Mississippi Delta cotton plantation 1901-1906. Italians were illegally imported to the South under false pretenses and held in a contract labor system designed to put and keep them in debt while the few remaining African American sharecroppers taught the Italians to work cotton, speak English, and survive. A vicious manager/ overseer, an absentee plantation owner, a rape, an interracial “Romeo and Juliet” love affair, a murder, and hints of a Federal investigation complicate the characters’ lives as they learn bitter truths about race and friendship in America.

The novel was inspired by the childhood experiences of Bush’s grandmother and her family who were unwitting participants in the “Italian Colony Experiment.”

Blue tears by Mary Russo Demetrick

Scattered
through the grass
grape
hyacinths
peek at us
from their green carpet
remind us
of their history
here
there once was a
purple flower bed
rows of these
hyacinths
planted
by a woman
to honor her parents
and now
many years later
they honor their planter
my dear mother-in-law
whose earth-stained
hands
nurtured her garden
planted bulbs and annuals
on each of these graves
and now long dead
she has no flowers
on her own grave
unless
I bring them
I cannot understand this oversight
and even though
it isn’t my childhood tradition
in the spring time
I bring pussy willows
place them on her grave
and on those of her parents
after all
these are my children’s
forebears
their history
their heritage

Mary Russo Demetrick April 15, 2012

Mary Russo Demetrick is a poet who survived brain aneurysm surgery 11 years ago.
She strives to retain her poetic voice and vision while celebrating the life she came so close to losing.

Donations For Diane Di Prima fundraiser on GiveForward.com

from: http://www.giveforward.com/donationsfordianediprima

Help Poet Laureate and feminist icon Diane Di Prima through a series of painful and life threatening operations.

Poet Laureate of San Franscisco and feminist revolutionary icon Diane Di Prima has inspired so many of us for over 50 years, whether we know it or not. She was one of the only women of the Beat Generation and was instrumental in shaping the way we view gender based politics. She was homies with Ezra Pound! She has published over 4 dozen books of poetry! She is the mother of 5 children!!

Diane is undergoing a series of painful and difficult surgeries, including having all her teeth removed. Without going into any more details, let’s talk about what we can do for a woman who did so much for the advancement of women. If you or someone you know has been inspired by Diane personally or by her large body of work over the last 50 years, please donate anything you can to help her get through this intensely difficult time and the many operations that she is about to go through. Your donation will go towards rehabilitation and medical costs.

For more questions or information, please contact Amber Tamblyn at: amtam.amber@gmail.com

SPREAD THE WORD!

Information on Diane Di Prima:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_di_Prima

Suggested Reading List on Our Linkedin Page

Please see our suggested reading list on our linkedin page http://www.linkedin.com/in/italianamericanwritersassoc