An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Dear Mayor Coleman, a bevy of city workers met me at the cottonwood tree this afternoon – if bevy is quite the word to include a burly Public Works guy. There they all were, kind, and informative. What seemed to … 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
When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she imagined a neighborhood so quiet as to be dead. All the birds gone due to DDT’s effect on thinning their shells and killing the worms and insects they ate. Today we … Continued
Not this year, but a few years ago, we entered the Kasbah of Hawai’i hipsters, circa 1970. No clue outside the low, white dwelling with palms-and-hibiscus yard. No clue in the blue-green lapping lagoon and fluffy white clouds above. But once we opened … Continued
Dear Music Lovers, the Twin Cities now has two dueling orchestras back on stage. Well, not exactly dueling, but at least playing at each other across the river. I could not be happier, though I rarely cross the great divide … Continued
We have two sensibilities in this house–my husband’s deep-rooted radicalism. He went to prison during Vietnam not just as a draft dodger, but as a draft refuser. I didn’t know him them. Now he reads The Nation. During Vietnam I … Continued
Our three don’t go out so we don’t worry about frostbitten paws or frozen fur. It’s been snowing so much lately, they would be wet if they braved the elements–little Julia the black and white, with a cute moustache and … Continued
Supposed to be the worst winter here in flyover land since 1982-3. And what do I immediately recall from thirty years ago? Not where I lived, nor who I lived with, but the car. It was a VW Super Beetle, … Continued
Too many years ago to count, I won the Loft’s Mentor Series as a poet. Over the course of nine months, we were guided by perhaps six mentors, among them the poet and novelist Jim Harrison. I was recently divorced … Continued