An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Puccini’s La Boheme is the quintessential Italian love story. Yes, I know, there’s always Verdi’s La Traviata with Violetta (reformed high-class prostitute) dying of TB at the end. She’s left her middle-class lover at the instigation of his father–to “save” … Continued
In these days of intense partisanship, when disgust at our fellow citizens runs high, it’s been a good counteractive to listen to David McCullough read his account of 1776, when a rag-tail army, dirty, foul-mouthed, and cold, eventually forced the … Continued
I’ve been noticing a shift in heat and days, the congregation of birds at the free-standing feeder, now full of chickadees and red and gold finches, as the fledglings forage for themselves and parents fatten up for the cold. Summer’s … Continued
William Faulkner drew the title for his 1932 novel from a comment his wife made while they were sitting on their porch, “There’s something different about the light in August.” That was in the depths of the Great Depression. Here … Continued
The Mississippi Flyway, it’s called–that rather wide band of north-south air traffic from the top of Lake Superior down the Minnesota and Wisconsin watershed to the huge Mississippi delta, including its many tributary deltas like the Yazoo, home of Eudora … Continued
What are the two most powerful human impulses–after food and sex? I’d vote for motion. Let’s try pilgrimage and conquest. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales gives voice, certainly for the first time in English, to the charm of communal travel toward a … Continued
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s short story collection titled American Salvage recently caught my attention because a friend of many years and few actual visits recently drove me through rural Michigan where many of the stories take place. My friend Irene (not … Continued
In Italian “corpo” suggests the human body and a body of work; so in English we overlap the same ideas. Our bodies give birth to our work. The best poetry tilts the mind toward the body’s corporeality. In Florence, recently, … Continued
As our government process gets messier and looser and more unpredictable, I’ve been considering the messiness of fiction. Poetry, back in the ages, had the rhythm of oral declamation, almost like singing. Each line or “period” was shaped by the … Continued
Three or four time during my years of visiting Florence/Firenze, I’ve been driven by friends out of the city. There are places unreachable by train, bicycle, or easy autobus. The restaurant called Bibe’s is one of them. In the direction … Continued