An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
When my sister visited from Boston last week, we dragged out the family albums and letters. Really, it’s only one side of the family that’s represented, and only one letter writer–our North Dakota grandmother, our mother’s mother Augusta. We knew … Continued
For the British, the deaths in World War I struck hard. In that “war to end all wars,” some in British coastal towns could see the flare of mortars and hear the firing of guns in Belgian. In that war … Continued
When I was growing up in South Carolina–before contemporary civil rights, before Martin Luther King, Jr., before busing, white fight, and the recent police violence against black people in many U.S. cities–I lived in a block-long, castle-like fortress that was … Continued
In the last week, the Christmas cactus by the computer has grown bright green shoots two and a half inches long. The light is changing, lengthening, and the wind is whirling. Long sticks of trees across the street sway like … Continued
The Russians are particularly good at this–an upwelling of tears at the turn of a head or sliding into a car. Today’s snow and high clouds make me think of a Chekhov troika pausing in a stand of thin trees … Continued
Even as I write this, I sense the double meaning–white as in snow-covered, aka, Minnesota Northland Christmases, but also “white” as in belonging to those with white skin. When I was growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, we “whities” were … Continued
Late Summer Tears You don’t have to weep with me–not wrenching sobs at any rate, just a slow seep of wet, honoring the clouds of green and scimitars of swallows twittering against high blue. Mornings on the deck with black and … Continued
Growing up in South Carolina, I had no trouble identifying segregation. Blacks sat at the back of the city bus, whites in front. In dime stores, blacks were not allowed to sit at lunch counters. Super markets were for whites; small corner groceries … Continued
It was first my daughter’s when we moved into this tall St. Paul house. One of two rooms on the third floor, it was the one facing south. And until the locust and olive trees grew tall enough for shade, it … Continued
I used to believe that I was the young Mozart. This came about when I read his biography, a book with an orange cover, sitting in my father’s huge, over-stuffed chair, during the heat of a South Carolina summer. When … Continued