An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
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
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
When my daughter was maybe five or six, we would walk out of Prospect Park in southeast Minneapolis, cross the bridge over Highway 94, and reach our side of the Mississippi. Since the river runs north/south there before it bends … Continued
Scott King, poet/publisher of Red Dragonfly Press housed at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, writes to offer appreciation of the recent blog featuring his poem, and the addition of two corrections: the Greek poet who inspired him (and may … Continued
Not the cruelest, despite T.S. Eliot’s “April is the cruelest…,” though there’s plenty of breeding out of the deadland. Nor is it necessarily dreaded tax time since for us at least, we’re almost always so afraid of not sending enough … Continued
“Methought I saw my late espoused saint,” begins Milton’s sonnet 23. It was a dream that had resurrected her, this second wife Katherine whom he married in 1656 when he was already blind. What magical murmurs of delight dreams whisper … Continued
My photographer friend Linda Gammell recently told me about a winter week she spent in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. Her work usually focuses on prairie plants–rose hips, gamma grasses, staghead ferns. What was she doing in all that … Continued
Along with Shakespearean Sonnets, “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear, and “Invictus” by Ernest Henley–all great warhorses or bird/cat chariots of the p’try world, students at a recent Poetry Out Loud presentation I judged in Minneapolis gave us … Continued