An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
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
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
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
It is quiet now with the snow. Streets, sidewalks muffled. A dog barks. We are too far for church bells. In Charleston winters when I grew up, we often had windows open to the clack of palm fronds and … Continued
“Over the river and through the woods/ To Grandfather’s house we go” meant traveling three days and two nights on the train from Charleston, South Carolina to Hankinson, North Dakota. Grandfather’s house was a glorious, gingerbread affair set on a … Continued
“It is a truth universally acknowledged… So begins Jane Austen’s divine novel “Pride and Prejudice.” Austen’s satiric pen turns like a double-edged knife toward the reader and the characters in her novel. Let’s try that tactic: It’s a truth universally … Continued
Since I seem to have born with an academic calendar in my head, mid-May to Labor Day is a season out of time and work. Especially in the last five years since I’ve declared verboten any teaching during the summer. … Continued
They were never just young. Not the disaffected youths with cigarettes dangling from their lips: James Dean and company whose coolness had to do with disaffection, disengagement, a superior stance that would not grub nor lord it over. This … Continued
I don’t mean white-washing atrocities or making up glories that never existed for the sake of local pride. This is a far more personal, individual venture–person to person, reader to reader. In the last twenty years, let’s say, there’s been … Continued