An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Late Summer Tears You don’t have to weep with me–not wrenching sobs at any rate, just a slow seep of wet, honoring the clouds of green and scimitars of swallows twittering against high blue. Mornings on the deck with black and … Continued
According to Uncle Frankie, fighting with the American 8th Army, surviving malaria in North Africa, working their way up Italy’s boot, slipping Neapolitan whores into American officers’ beds, and falling in love with a New York lawyer attached to Eisenhower’s central staff kept … Continued
Growing up in South Carolina, I had no trouble identifying segregation. Blacks sat at the back of the city bus, whites in front. In dime stores, blacks were not allowed to sit at lunch counters. Super markets were for whites; small corner groceries … Continued
A dear friend, retired from teaching Art History at the University of Minnesota, leads “study abroad” courses to Florence or Rome for undergraduates. Usually his students are native Minnesotans, attending the “land grant” university where their own parents may have … Continued
Moon Snail, plucked from low tide at Edisto Island winters ago–the kid still in kindergarten. Its curve has the sinuous appeal of a Pre-Raphaelite madonna, borrowed from Islam. Lately this beach, once so empty of humans except ourselves, has lost … Continued
It’s a “Misty Moisty Morning of real Chicago weather,” my mother used to recite, except we weren’t in Chicago but Charleston, South Carolina, and my mother, the Midwesterner, couldn’t help herself. Midwestern weather and geography overlay her view of our … Continued