An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Yesterday at The Loft, a Place for Readers & Writers in Minneapolis, two poets talked about their love of the art.. Mark Doty and Terry K. Smith, the first teacher to the second, the first well-known for writing a haunting … Continued
For the first hour or two after take-off on an over-the-ocean flight, my spirits are bouyant. I enjoy talking to my seat-mate. Yesterday (which stretched an additional 7 hours), my good luck had me seated next to an Irish lawyer … 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
Before the academic police put the U.S. education system in its grip, Kindergarten was run like a glorified play center. Not so anymore, with grave consequences. It turns out, as the great modern observers of childhood development have been telling … Continued
I know no one from Turkey, but some of my students practice an African version of Islam. They are Somali, have come here as refugees, often after spending years in Kenyan refugee camps. Thus I have acquired a small education … 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
It’s not my first one–this collective. Early in my poetry writing, I took part in the Lake Street Writers Group. It was the 70s, with an explosion of interest in personal expression, in poetry about streets and lanes, farms and … Continued
When Fran and I settled into this century-old house in Saint Paul, twenty-five years ago, there was nothing planted in the yard except grass. I mean no bush, no flower, no tree except the boulevard ash. Nothing to soften the … Continued
Forgive me, I’m headed toward a slam of one of the great orchestral numbers. Last night we heard our favorite orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, preform several Schuberts and one modern amazement: Betty Olivero’s “Neharot, Neharot,” which means “Rivers, … Continued