by SALVATORE PANE I don’t know why, but the trend these days is to build banks in strip malls. There are no vaults, no elegant ceilings, rarely more than a lone yawning teller. My financial institution looks more like a cell phone store or a child’s drawing of a bank, stripped of detail or anything …
by ANNIE LANZILLOTTO “If I could bless the whole world” In 2013 Clare and I were editing her book manuscript of poetry. I emailed her this question: Clare, p66, there’s a line on the bottom of the page…. which poem does it belong to? a lost line?”If I could bless the whole world”. Annie Now …
by ARIANNA DAGNINO In Spite of My Brilliant Brain (for Hannah Arendt) An inconvenient womanin inconvenient times, I grew upwith men falling under my charm,the depths of my exotic gaze, they’d say,rivalling the reaches of my mind. The first time Herr Professorpressed his mouth againstmy lips, I felt like a leafin the raging wind of …
by ILARIA SERRA This article wants to be a bridge between Italy and the United States – under the sign of poetry and pietas. Therefore, it is presented both in English and Italian. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burst in flames on March 25, 1911, and that tragedy has not been forgotten. On that day, 146 …
by ROSA AMATULLI American born, Louisa Calio is a poet, writer and artistic performer, whose work has been described as possessing “a sensitivity to multiculturalism and ethnic diversity that is sometimes lacking in Italian American culture” (Stanislao Pugliese), and “a profound passion for the lyrical,” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.).Winner ofnumerous awards in Italy and in the USA, …
by PETER COVINO Dressed (iPhone Text and Image) In richly hand-embroidered gray lace, like the women in storefront dress shops used to make in vacation villages near the Amalfi Coast. The stitch and colors less delicate, garishly saturated, coarser fabric, tending toward silver-blue; layered uneven skirt, ample in the midsection, undulant, just below the knee. …
An introduction by Edvige Giunta “Every memoirist is a ghost writer”: Louise DeSalvo Four Years after her Death–and the Posthumous Publication of “Sister 5” It seems appropriate that the first writing by Louise DeSalvo to be published since her death almost four years ago appears both in the original, unedited English text and in a …
by MICHELA VALMORI Sofia was born in America, but her mom and dad were Italian, from Napoli. She lived happily in New York with her family and her Nonna and Nonno. Sofia was a cute and sweet young girl, she loved her school, but she enjoyed summer most because her Nonna Anna would take her …
di ANNIE LANZILLOTTO The Bronx, New York, 1968 “War is full of smoke.” Lanzi’s laugh is a single gruff exhale. Cigarette smoke gushes out his nostrils and up into the light over the table. His eyebrows are thick and black and move up and down one at a time fast as pinball flippers. His left …
by ILARIA SERRA “Poor Christ,” Italian immigrant. The Italian saying refers to people who are unlucky and disgraced: Poor Christ… but in Italian American literature and art it has become a widespread metaphor, at least thanks to the foundational novel Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato, released in the United States in 1939 and …
