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REVIEWS For Ferdinando
Alfonsi, Thomas
Centolella,
Lewis Turco, Dominic R. Massaro, Caterina Edwards and Marco Micone,
Giuliana Morandini, Mary Melfi, and Anthony Valerio
Ferdinando
Alfonsi. Poesia
Italo-Americana: Saggi e Testi / Italian American Poetry: Essays and Texts.
Catanzaro: Carello Editore, 1991. Pp. 386. Dr. Ferdinando
Alfonsi is an Italianist who has devoted much of his recent energy to
developing the important dialogue between Italian and American cultures.
These efforts have resulted in the bilingual anthology Italo-American Poets (Antonio Carello Editore, 1989) and his Dictionary of Italo-American Poets
(Peter Lang, 1989). His latest
contribution to this project, the bilingual Italian American Poetry: Essays and Texts, begins the work of
examining the hundreds of poets found in his Dictionary. Alfonsi says this study of five poets (plus himself)
is the first of twenty projected volumes that will focus on themes, symbols
and the language of the poetry produced by American writers of Italian
descent. Essays and Texts
is divided into five sections: first are general essays which examine the
following questions. What is Italian/American poetry? Why is Italian/American
literature behind other ethnic/ American literature? Is there a language
peculiar to Italian/American poetry? And, what are the images of Italy that
are found in this poetry? The second section is
devoted to the examination of individual authors: Ferdinando Alfonsi, Arthur
Clements, Celestino De Juliis, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Joseph Greco, and
Joseph Tuccio. A third section presents five poems (in English and Italian)
by each of the writers examined. These are followed by a brief bibliography,
and finally an Appendix, which contains a supplement to Alfonsi’s 1989 Dictionary. In part one, Alfonsi
republishes “Italian American Poetry: In Search of a Definition,” which
served as an introduction to his earlier Dictionary.
The problems with this essay, i.e. Alfonsi reads ethnicity as not a social
construction, but as an element that “manifests itself in the somatic
structure” (26) have been sufficiently addressed in earlier critiques by
Professors Justin Vitiello (Italica
68.1 [Spring 1991]: 60-62) and Anthony J. Tamburri (Voices in Italian Americana 1.2 [Spring 1990]: 135-37). Suffice
it to add that while Alfonsi asks all the right questions, his answers leave
much to be desired. In trying to come to
terms with why Italian Americans are “at least two generations behind if we
consider what has already been accom-plished by other ethnic groups” (41),
Alfonsi offers a weak attempt at an answer. First of all, cultural
development can not and should not be likened to a foot race. Secondly,
Alfonsi would do well to expand his exposure to contemporary theorists in the
field of ethnicity, women’s studies, and the Italian Americanists of Arba Sicula, italian americana and Voices in Italian Americana. While
there is no single answer there, the tools to approach the answers are
certainly available. In addition, he might
refer to Vico, whose theory of cultural evolution better fits Alfonsi’s need
to chart the development of Italian/American poetry in relation to other
American ethnic groups such as Jews and African/Americans. This essay could
better further the cause by acknowledging such vital contributions as The Dream Book: Writings by Italian
American Women (1987) and From the
Margin: Writings in Italian Americana (1991). Alfonsi’s third
chapter on the language of Italian/American culture, is perhaps this book’s
most valid contribution to the study of Italian/American literature. It is a
fine survey of this linguistic phenomenon and is a welcomed addition to the
earlier linguistic studies by Luigi Ballerini and Fredi Chiappelli, the late
Robert J. Di Pietro, and Michael La Sorte. The next chapter,
“Italy in Italo-American Poetry,” introduces what is perhaps the most
problematic element of this study: Alfonsi’s need to include his own poetry
(111-12). If the reader has yet to suspect Alfonsi’s approach, such suspicion
would be impossible to avoid by the time he or she has reached this chapter,
and certainly will become full blown when coming to the next chapter which
begins the examination of individual poets. Chapter V, “The
Poetry of Ferdinando Alfonsi,” written by the professor’s wife, throws into
question the entire work. One can only ask why Alfonsi has decided that out
of the hundreds of Italian/American poets he has documented in his
dictionary, he had to include himself. Even if Alfonsi’s work was better
known, the essay assumes an unearned familiarity with poems that are not
included in the “Texts” section. The major question raised here is, can we
take this work seriously? Aside from this, there is the question of why Alfonsi
includes such poetasters as Joseph Tuccio with legitimate poets as Arthur
Clements and Maria Gillan. The problem with
Alfonsi’s tired and dated way of reading of all the poets for symbols,
themes, and diction is that while he rightly searches out Italian connections
to Dante and Moravia, he ignores the obvious American and English
influences—can we read Maria Gillan without recognizing the influences of the
other poets of Paterson such as Williams and Ginsberg, or sister poets such as
Denise Levertov and Diane DiPrima? Such an approach might work for lesser
poets such as Tuccio. However, Gillan, Clements, and De Juliis certainly
deserve better. Italian/American
literature is more complex than Alfonsi’s interpretation leads us to believe.
While he has certainly contributed to the project of Italian/American
criticism, the question remains, has this contribution added to the reasons
why it can continue to be ignored? Fred Gardaphe Columbia College, Chicago Thomas Centolella. Terra Firma.
Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1990. 77pp. Thomas Centolella is a young poet whose first book of poetry
won the National Poetry Series (selected by Denise Levertov) in 1990, and
received the Before Columbus Foundation Award in 1991. Centolella is Italian
only on his father’s side, originating from a town near Naples; on his
mother’s side he is Lebanese. But does one give blood tests to poets? No. We
claim him, as Italian, as Mediterranean, and he himself professes his love
for the earth, for the family, a deep compassion for the suffering of
mankind, as well as an implicit and effortless understanding for the human
condition. Centolella also carries with him the traditional baggage of family
bonds and loyalties, and of the ecstasies and strictures of a Catholic
upbringing. The title of Centolella’s book, Terra Firma, is a declaration of the poet’s ars poetica: his poetry is rooted in the soil, in the ground. It
is a poetry in which the everyday and the earthy are metamorphosed through
vivid imagery and a process of distillation. Nothing high-faluting about
Centolella’s poems, which read deceptively simple, often made up of long
verses. Centolella’s poetry is grounded, it evolves from the poet’s roots and
in turn takes root. Thomas Centolella was born and educated in Upstate New York,
and later transplanted himself successfully into the San Francisco scene. In
his youth, his poetry won awards at Syracuse University and at the State
University of New York at Buffalo. He has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at
Stanford University. He has taught at U.C. Berkeley Extension, and is
currently teaching at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California. He now
lives in San Francisco’s Mission district. Centolella’s poetry is colloquial, intimate, deeply
philosophical, often subdued in tone. The slim, beautiful volume by Copper
Canyon Press is composed of poems which read as pages of an inner journal, as
a concatenation of observations to oneself, of sudden illuminations piercing
through the reality of everyday’s life. At times the reader might think that
he is overhearing the poet talking to himself, as poets and solitary people
do, in a continuous inner monologue, or a long dialogue with a friend
speaking long-distance into the night. Centolella comes from an urban setting back East, and his
poetry now reflects the complex, multi-racial landscape of the Mission
district, which comes to us, through his poems, with its bright colors, its
noise, its snippets of jazz phrases coming out of open windows, its inner
city tension. And yet, Centolella’s poetry is highly sophisticated in its
content, and rooted in a solid academic background which is never allowed to
burden or overwhelm the reader. There is nothing mawkish or sentimental in
Centolella’s poetry; rather, it emanates a great strength of language,
stemming from deep inspirational forces. But it is not poetry that gushes.
Centolella writes slowly, with classical measure, and works very hard at his
poetry. The book begins with a wish to understand humanity. Having
denounced the failure of academic pursuits, the poet attempts now to read
human faces: And I looked up from the
book that had been failing miserably to enlighten or uplift
me, and among the dreary stack and institutional quiet,
I was drawn to human faces—each one
holding the weight of a world carefully chosen or
acquired at random, faces open to me now as
any book— and one by one, I began
to read them. (Transparency) Under its everyday semblance, Centolella’s poetry expresses a
deep longing for lost things, for lost people. It has a haunting quality: There are those who will
never return to us as we knew them. Who if
they return at all visit our sleep, or
daydreams, or turn up in the features of total strangers. Or
greet us face to face in the middle of some
rush hour street, but from a great
distance—and not in the full flush of bodies that once
wanted nothing more from us than the laying of our
hands upon them, as a healer lays hands
upon the afflicted. There are those who by
their absence are an affliction. (Anti-Elegy) Absence, void, nostalgia . . . these are afflictions
that can be healed by poetry, by the act of recording them, and therefore
distilling them. Everyday reality, with its simple repetitive acts, such as
doing the laundry, walking the neighborhood’s streets, having coffee with
friends, cooking, etc., comes to the foreground. Centolella’s poetry has
concreteness, it takes its imagery from the vivid purple of eggplant (“my
purple beauties”, he says), it extols simple acts such as picking parsley
from a garden for a pasta meal, it talks of Chianti and Chardonnay, it evokes
the smell of sourdough bread . . . Terra Firma. In In the
Garden, Centolella avows his feeling of closeness to the earth: The closer to terra firma one is the more firma one feels. After a long hike, I
stink. therefore I am. Memories of a Catholic upbringing crowd the poems: the
teachings of humility, the recollections of nuns rapping harshly on
children’s knuckles, the cautioning words of an old parish priest, the
cathartic or sadistic ritual of Saturday afternoon confession . . .
the recollections of the convent of Santa Sabina. But the poet’s saints now
have changed, his allegiance now going to jazz artists he adores, such as St.
Thelonius (Monk) and St. John Coltrane. Jazz soloes often accompany the
musings of this poet. But the poet’s Lebanese side also comes to the surface,
with the fatalistic acceptance of life which is the greatest gift and curse
of some Mediterranean cultures. It surfaces also in a poem to his beloved
Lebanese grandmother, Sito, whose death he mourns in a moving poem
recollecting other lands, other times, other aromas . . . In Zeno’s Progress,
under the philosopher’s persona, the poet depicts himself during his
nocturnal efforts at poetry writing: . . . a man gets
up in the night recalling how
interminable those still points seemed that got him here, and
step by slow step makes it to his desk to
write all of this down. The tone is meditative,
quiet, philosophical. It is significant that the poet appears in his own
poetry reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. The collection includes poems of great descriptive force, such
as Two Elephants, in which a
delicate scene from a Moghul miniature is painstakingly depicted. Easter ends with a sudden and
unexpected description of a ceramic mug from Umbria, whose colors evoke the
hills of Central Italy in their stillness. Misterioso, (the
title comes from a Thelonius Monk piece) is one of the deepest poems in the
collection. It deals with the problems inherent in relationships between
humans, and with the inevitable tragedy of loss and misunderstanding through
lack of timing and lack of opportunity. It starts: The more people I know
and the more I know people the more frightening
they become. Everyone has been damaged to near
extinction. Everyone has loved inordinately
those they should not have loved except in the most
disembodied spirit of good will. And everyone has been
loved at some time or another by the wrong people, or
for the wrong reasons, or for reasons that at the time seemed
suspect, insubstantial. And who hasn’t been at
the mercy of circumstance: born under a bad sign,
born with bad genes, or just born, period. Timing is
everything and some will never be the right person in the
right place at the right time, no matter how hard or
how long they try. Period. The poem ends with
another observation on human relations, and love, which is at their basis: Back to being human, back to the old dream of accepting the timely
disclosures of love, or what in my time has
passed for love. Even if the truth love
brings can often be ruthless. In no poem is Centolella closer to the Mediterranean legacy as
in the poem Ossi dei Morti, in
which the poet describes the death of an uncle from bone marrow cancer, as
well as an exchange of thought over coffee with a woman who—like many of
us—confesses to her particular knack of always falling in love with the wrong
person. Ossi dei Morti, bones of
the dead, are the gruesome if very descriptive name of a Southern Italian
pastry, shaped like bones and replete with a sweet filling which brings to
mind bone marrow. Gruesome, except in a culture that does not see death as
negative or repellent, but that rather extols the link between life and the
world of the beyond: we are nourished by those who came and lived before us,
we feed on the bones of the dead, and they taste good, sweet, nourishing.
Centolella’s book is one of the best poetry books that have come out in a
decade, and it has the dual quality of being innovative while being steeped
in tradition. Laura Anna Stortoni American Italian Historical Association, Berkeley, California Lewis Turco. Dialogue: How to Get
Your Characters Talking to Each Other in a Way that Vividly Reveals Who They
Are, What They’re Doing, and What’s Coming Next in Your Story.
Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1989. 118 pages, index, $12.95 “Just tell me one thing: even if I am struggling to write
fiction, why the hell should I shell out twelve ninety-five for this
particular book?” Are you kidding me? Because Lewis Turco is a rarity among
writers of how-to-write books. He can, he does, and he also teaches. “What’s that supposed to mean?” It means that on the first page of the book Turco starts
sparring with an imaginary character named Fred, a smart-assed interlocutor
who objects loudly if you refer to him as
a foil rather than an antagonist. The book consists of a running
conversation between them that both describes the different techniques Turco
wants to emphasize, and also shows how to use them. “Pretty damned clever. It almost sounds too cute.” Well, it could be if someone with less wit and fewer good ideas
tried it, but Turco really pulls it off. Look, let’s listen to this bit of
banter where Turco shows Fred how nomenclature—and that’s naming, in case
you’re thrown by the big word—can be a shortcut to characterization: “Hey!” Fred yells. The Author jumps back, started. “How come I
don’t have a last name?” “What do you need a last name for? [Characters in some stories]
have no names at all.” Fred just gives the Author a cold, sardonic stare. “Okay, we’ll go with characterization by nomenclature—your last
name is Foyle. . . Fred Foyle. How’s that?” Fred groans. “I had to ask.” “Well, that’s your name. Judging from the spelling you’re
probably in Irishman. Now, what’s your question?” Do you see what I mean about the way Turco uses dialogue to
teach dialogue? “I’m starting to, but maybe it’d help if you gave me some more
specifics.” Sure. In the first chapter, for example Fred and Turco iron out
a series of definitions so you know what they’re talking about when they say
“asides,” “exposition,” or “monologue.” In Chapter II, “Speech in Narration,”
they bicker over tag lines, author intrusion, pace, dialect, and even what it
means to start things in media res. “Hey, I’m a Hispanist, and we usually think that last thing
means ‘in the middle of the cow.’ In Gaucho literature you can even use the
ablative absolute and translate it as, ‘the barbecue already having
begun. . . .” Knock it off and let’s get back to Turco. Chapter II,
“Diction,” gives all kinds of examples of subjective, objective, and dramatic
word order, and then talks about levels of diction, dialect, and slang. As an
example of a demeaning and stereotypical use of imagined slang, Turco reads
Fred a passage from Uncle Remus, and Fred cuts right to the chase: Fred’s . . . jaw is slack and he is making little
gurgling noises at the back of his throat. . . . “That’s a
classic? It’s extremely annoying. I can’t imagine reading a whole story like
that, let alone a whole book. . . . That’s ‘sezee’ stuff is
infuriating,” . . . his voice is a growl. He sits down suddenly.
“What are you trying to tell me?” “That what one can ‘get away with’ depends on a number of factors,
including the historical period in which one writes, the audience for whom
one writes, one’s talent, and so on.” “No one could get away with writing like that today?” “No one.” “That’s adorable, but does Turco talk about some of the more
traditional elements that a creative writing teacher might want to stress in
a class?” In your clumsy way, you’re trying to ask if this book could
effectively be used as a text? Hell, yes! Turco uses examples from a wide
range of fictions—from Kate Chopin (to illustrate verisimilitude) to Danielle
Steel (to show generic romance dialogues). “It sounds to me as though Turco is remarkably free from
uptight biases about what kind of materials can be incorporated into art.” Yeah, he’s a true modern who sees the textures in marble and
plastic, bronze and burlap. Like sculptor David Smith, Turco is an artist
whose work is for those who are able to come to it without prejudices. “You just said a pretentious mouthful.” That may be true, but in a hundred and eighteen pages, Turco
and Fred never do. Maybe the best thing is for us to just stop talking and
listen to them. Patricia Hart Purdue University Dominic R. Massaro. Cesare Beccaria—The
Father of Criminal Justice: His Impact on Anglo-American Jurisprudence.
International University Press, Pescia, Italy, 1991, 95pp. This book is a treatment
of the state of eighteenth-century criminal law by Judge Dominic R. Massaro.
This work deals with the contributions made by its subject to legal and penal
reforms with particular focus on the philosophical principles and their
logical implications in the United States. As a sitting New York Supreme
Court Justice, the author adds his unique perspective to the description of
the philosophy of the Italian scholar, the Marquis de Beccaria. Modern
criminal law took shape under the influence of Beccaria which resulted in a
greater reliance placed on reason rather than terror. Philosophers and
sociologists are interested in social order, and sociologists in how society
is possible. Sociologists, particularly those specializing in criminology,
grapple with the artificial confines necessary for social order and the
effects these confines have on indi-viduals. Criminologists are specifically
concerned with the prevailing social order that defines society. They seek to
explain the relationship between society and justice, and to consolidate the
need for social order with principles of human rights. Massaro’s work
recognizes the signi-ficance of the thoughts and writings of Beccaria on the theoretical
foundations for the Classical School of Criminology. The author places
Beccaria on a stage set by Montesquieu and for an audience amplified by
Voltaire. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Beccaria were idealist, and the ideal
they shared was a system of justice for the criminal offender. Modern criminology came
into being in 1764 with the publication of Beccaria’s Essays on Crimes and Punishment. Massaro points out Beccaria’s
goal was to humanize both law and punishment. His ideas defined the Classical
School insofar as they constituted the first system of thinking in the area
of criminology: just as Hebrew, Greek, and Latin are called the classical
languages because they were the first to adequately communicate modern
abstract thinking. Judge Massaro makes it clear that Beccaria’s work was
instrumental in paving the way for penal reforms of the last two centuries,
and he credits this Italian scholar with initiating if not radically changing
modern thinking on matters of crime and criminality. Massaro highlights the
concept of the “social contract” which Beccaria adopted. Social contract
theory holds that each person was required to give up only enough liberty to
society to make society a viable entity. He saw laws as necessary conditions
for social contract. Beccaria articulated the famous recommendation that the
basis for all social action must be “the greatest happiness for the greatest
number.” Massaro presents that another major point of Beccaria’s argument was
the contention that the individual operated under free will. It was believed
that in every act man exercised a choice of alternatives and if he avoided
criminal behavior it was because he anticipated pain from that choice. This
is based on the principle of hedonism, the pleasure-pain principle. Punishment
was seen as a device which, when attached to crime, would result in enough
pain or anticipated pain to counteract the anticipated pleasure of the act.
In order for this to be an effective philosophy, laws must be written so that
each person can read and understand, then, the punishment must be fixed. The
value of punishment rests more in its inevitability than in its violence.
This would require an end to capricious and arbitrary interpretations by
judges. This philosophy, as Judge Massaro points out, led to the famous recommendation:
“let the punishment fit the crime.” This made criminal law more impartial
than it had been, and judges became instruments of the law rather than rulers
over it. On a contrasting note,
Judge Massaro, whose activism occasionally rivals his scholarship, once
elsewhere commented on Beccaria: “Indeed, it is ironic, while organized crime
is often identified—even equated—by the popular media with an Italian
mystique, that the father of our modern day criminal law, with its inherent
concepts of due process and equal protection, is an Italian.” Beccaria’s work
was admired widely during his lifetime, providing a strong influence for
reform throughout the Continent, in England, and eventually the United States
in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Eventually, sixty editions of
Beccaria’s treatise were issued in scores of languages. Cesare Beccaria - The Father of Criminal Justice is a clear, brief presentation
of the contributions of this most important Italian thinker to the social
sciences in general, and to the criminal justice system in particular.
Printed in both English and Italian, Dr. Massaro includes extensive
references and a bibliography along with the lucidity of his discussion of
Beccaria’s life and main ideas. Though the work is short, it provides the
reader with vital knowledge about issues which are still at the core of
European and American legal and political thought. To see the present and
illuminate the future, one must gain the light from the past. Dominic Massaro
offers us that light with his study of the man who inspired our attitude
respecting human rights in the administration of criminal justice. Dorothy Balancio Mercy College Caterina Edwards. Homeground. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1990; and,
Marco Micone. Two Plays—Voiceless
People, Addolorata. Trans.
Mauizia Binda. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1988. Guernica Editions, a
Canadian press, has recently published two compelling books of plays which
depict Italian immigrant struggles in Canada. Both books dramatically
underscore the challenges of Italian immigrants living among the Quebecois
who disdainfully reject them. These plays capture the struggles of meshing
one’s former set of cultural values with a new set of hegemonic values. While
they draw attention to ethnic identification and the ubiquity of ethnic
assimilation, more importantly they demonstrate that Italian immigrants and
assimilators experience estrangement in North America. Homeground tells the story of three people, Maria, Cesare,
and Lucio, who feel alienated in their New Canadian homeland. Maria and
Cesare run a boarding house where Lucio currently resides. While other past
and current boarders appear in this seven-scene play, serving as a background
chorus of strife in Canada, the relationship between Maria, Cesare and Lucio
moves the plot forward. Lucio pleads with Maria to disclose that he, not her
husband, Cesare, has fathered her child. In desperation, Lucio leaves a note
in Cesare’s lunchbox which discloses this truth. Maria repeatedly denies this
accusation and when confronted by Cesare, assures him of Lucio’s deluded
perspective on life. Maria and Cesare, united by concern for their boarder,
attempt to assist him but the play ends in tragedy. Homeground demonstrates that the desperation resulting
from assimilation can lead to insanity. Brief self-critical monologues
delivered at various points in the play represent the painful isolation each
character experiences. Here, Cesare shares his despair over finding the note
placed in his lunchbox: CESARE I should have seen it
coming; I should have taken note. If I were home more, if
I weren’t blinded by weariness. Unable to see, unable
almost to move. Bone weary. Especially tonight. The feel of coming
winter, the premonition of old age. It took me by surprise.
Sitting there with my boss on my lunchbreak. By
surprise. That’s why I lost control. Hot tempered
tears and words. In front of him. I exposed myself,
became the cliche of the Wop. I can hear him now.
“What can you expect from people like him?” What can you expect.
Damned lies. Any man would lose control, any man. A veil
of insinuations over the truth. “Despite all that has
happened Beppino is your child.” How dare he? Inform me
my son is my son. Suggest . . .
suggest that my wife . . . He can go to the devil.
And stay there. I will not help him again. Never.
After all these years, I thought we were friends,
brothers, and all along he . . . If I had him in my hands
right now, I could . . . Maria. Where is that woman
tonight? Maria! He deserves a good beating. Yes,
Maria, he deserves it. Oh I can imagine what she would
say. Calm yourself. Control. After Maria assures
Cesare of Lucio’s “mad” accusations, she revels in the sadness of immigrant
struggles by recounting a ritual: MARIA Oil, salt, oil
. . . How can I sleep with this head. Oil. The pills don’t help.
One, two, three . . . I have lost count, but still no
help. Oh. Who? Wine. They could at
least tell me. But oh no. It’s up to me. All up to me.
All the mess. The filth. Until that day. Until we
go home. I wanted to nurse both
my babies. At home, with the help for my aunt and my
sisters. I could have, I know I could have. But here,
with Beppino . . . “You’re too tense,” the doctor said.
Too tense. “Too alone,” he should have said. Then,
with Mimma, Lucio looked at me with his dark heart.
Oil, salt and water. And there was no more
milk. Poor mad Lucio. Now Candida is going too.
Oil and salt, flame and water. Yes, fire was a part of
it. But what part? At least she chose. Who
will I talk to? the other boys will be going soon
to marriage or home. There will be no one
. . . Poor mad Lucio. No one in the long days. No one to keep
back the cold as I wait and wait. . . . There is
safety in old ways, safety. The old rites. Oil and salt, flame and
water. If I could remember the words. I only heard them
a few times as a child, mumbled over my head or
that of my brothers and sisters. I left the
valley before I had the age or the wisdom to learn from the
older women. Each word must be exact. Oil and salt,
flame and water—that I remember. The words, the
words. It is Lucio who
succinctly summarizes the imprisonment felt by all of the characters before
descending into insanity: LUCIO I do not want to be
talked to. I am sick of all the useless sounds you have
all been making. None of you are strong enough to
face the truth. I know how alone I am, how alone each one
of us is. Alone without escape. Those first days here,
my search through alien streets for a trace of the
familiar, that was reality. At home, it was easier to
be fooled, to be taken in by the farcical comedy of
family life. We cling to our illusions. We lie even
to ourselves. But go out to the country and stand
beneath this western sky. You will feel it. Sadly poignant, Homeground reminds many of us of the
dark desperation felt by our Italian ancestors as they struggled to make
sense of North American values. Like Homeground, Marco Micone’s two plays, Voiceless People and Addolorata explore the entrapment
resulting from assimilation. Addolorata
addresses the unfairness of traditional cultural gender roles. Particularly
sympathetic to his female character, Micone punctuates the lack of
communication between men and women by weaving between the past and present
of a married couple. Micone shows Lolita and Johnny, in their enthusiastic
youthful heydey, promising to subscribe to their traditional roles, evolve
into Giovanni and Addolorata, soured by their conviction to these roles. In
the following monologue, Addolorata expresses her disgust with her marriage
to Giovanni: ADDOLORATA . . .
for ten years you came in at three in the morning, for ten years we never ate
together, for ten years, I lived above your poolroom, listening to your
customers’ swearing and seeing my children hang around in the back alley. For
ten years you haven’t cared about the kids, and for ten years I’ve been
handing my cheque over to you. Those are our ten years of marriage: never any
pleasure, never any holidays. Since we gave up going to Oka, we don’t go anywhere
anymore. Throughout “Addolorata,”
the younger Johnny and the older Giovanni blame North American insensitivity
to the immigrant as reason for failure. It seems as though they use the
“immigrant struggle” to scapegoat their failure. Yet, Micone might be
making a political statement about the immigrant. The overly preachy and
didactic tone of “Addolorata” can override Micone’s true intention. While
this “soapboxish nature” appears and disappears in “Addolorata,” it
completely undermines Micone’s intentions in “Voiceless People,” a series of
character remembrances of assimilation struggles. Though many of the stories
authentically capture the nuances of the assimilation process, such as
struggling with language, the quantity of stories can be overbearing to the
reader. Micone’s plays, however, are an important dramatic contribution which
politicizes immigrant struggles. Guernica Press deserves
praise for publishing plays which challenge the nostalgic notion of bringing
cultural values to new terrain. These plays are political, controversial, and
enjoyable reading material. Theresa Carilli Purdue
University, Calumet Giuliana Morandini. Bloodstains.
Translated by Blossom Steinberg Kirschenbaum. St. Paul: New Rivers Press,
1987. 102pp. The inevitable conflict between motherhood and war
universalizes Giuliana Morandini’s story of a disturbed little girl, who,
motherless, survives the German occupation of Friuli. Elsa’s poetic visions
and her knowledge of the necessity of solitude sustain her throughout the
frightful period, eventually enabling her to locate what is most necessary,
the mother within. Is it through Morandini’s poetry, and her translator Blossom
Steinberg Kirschenbaum’s eloquent loyalty to it that we experience the
monumental poetic narrative of Elsa’s inferno, seeking Mom among the Nazis.
The narrator, a mature Elsa looking back, achieves peak after peak of cyclic
revelation. The reader becomes aware of the permeable boundary between
artistic sensitivity and insanity. Elsa’s journey becomes the reader’s. We long with her for
contact with the elusive mother before and during the threatening occupation.
When the family and mother try to unite after soldiers have taken over their
home, we perceive along with Elsa why it’s necessary for a family—race, by
implication—to neither neglect or abandon its own members: For Elsa, all this was
happening too late, superfluously. If they had all learned
to love each other in the first place, perhaps their resistance
would have been more effective. Their united front did
her no good. (28) The tunnels and enclosed dark spaces Elsa seeks, where she
often sucks stolen sugar, where she unseen observes all activities on the
outside, are entered by a reader, who follows the dark mystery of the little
girl’s pursuit. Predictably womb-like, these places are rendered with the
freshness of a newborn language: The closet in which Elsa
hid was . . . beneath the stairway. Its ceiling slanted down almost
to the ground as though it were the neck of a funnel or the entrance to a
cave. It was windowless. . . . But for Elsa this darkness was fresh.
The darkness of the cellar . . . To enter it in imagination was
like letting herself go to certain dreams of unknown places. (18-19) The conflict between creation and destruction, motherhood and
murder, provides the dramatic tension we burn to see resolved. Metaphor and
empathy with the enemy’s pain are steps in this experience as Elsa watches a
young German soldier sob “for the long agony of his Germany, for the end of
this great mother in whom he had believed” (54). Earlier, she had followed
around like a baby chick who’s lost its mother another soldier who occupies
her house. Occasionally he threw a cube of jelly candy in her direction, a
poor substitute for mother’s milk. More dramatic cases of war raping motherhood occur as the
novel’s tension continues to build. A beautiful German woman who has been
used as a whore by the soldiers is seen in her death to the depths of her
womb. Everything had to have a
beginning from the horror of this dark drop lying on an intact coverlet and
absorbed there. . . . Just so in the belly a frightened cell had
turned away from the tangle of blood . . . suffocated in its
pulsing. . . . That drop had not yet been informed by spirit, that has
not yet felt its own separate identity, would remain fused to the mother. If
a gesture then disowned it, it might not have resolved the bitterness of the
separation. (60-61) There are places where
such imagery is carried too far, though, as when the day is described as not
wanting to be born, coming “as livid as a putrid abortion, a pasty lump
. . .” (67). Such forced images occur with inconsequential
rareness. Sparks of resolution appear as a soldier is wounded when a bomb
explodes. Here Morandini’s character engages with an irony that is also
refreshingly sarcastic, thus avoiding pretensions to a universal
profundity—that is achieved all the more through success of tone. . . . like
that pelvis tragically consenting to what he must have been born from
. . . he fell and at the same time seemed to rise up. War gradually
won him over. It gave birth and he was born. (62) He who was born to make
war, nonetheless was born; albeit a different kind of birth is meant here.
This soldier does live and the passage segment allows the word “born” rather
than “war” to conclude it. In a following passage that describes an Italian woman
protecting her baby, and hidden husband, the soldiers leave and maternal love
wins the conflict painted at the beginning of the scene: “Rifle-stocks
penetrated like blades into the still tender grass that might have preferred
to be crushed by bodies embracing in love” (68). There is a moment of added
tension when she has to choose between baby and husband, but there’s no final
authorial or narratorial judgment for this most natural of maternal
tendencies. The resoltuion of these pages is a pleasure to read through (I
won’t spoil it for future readers by quoting here). Much of the story comes together with the advent of Elsa’s
men-strual cycle. Initially, the reference could be to the soldier’s blood or
the blood of womanhood, as her period arrives during one of her recollections
after the war has ended. “This growth and this regulating [she has just been
contemplating the war’s effect on the land and the seasons] of the coursing
blood, these had to be natural facts of life even if no one told her anything
about them” (89). The ambiguity is resolute, but propelling, as well as
functional to the story’s cumulative meaning. Finally, and gorgeously, it is clearly her period. “Now it
trickled down slowly; it blackened. It formed a crust which in a bizarre way
looked like a button” (92). Positive values of this kind of blood flow from
metaphorical passages, like the one describing the beauty of fallen, ripe
figs. “Some had burst open, and from them oozed out a grainy pink fluid. The
pulp of the fruit, however, was pink, like a girl’s mouth, and it seemed to
want an equally desirous mouth to devour it in a single bite” (93). While at first there is some guilt in Elsa’s reception of her
period, “her mamma’s smile that did not seem punishing” (94) absolves her of
any connections she may have felt between the blood she has produced, and
that of the murdered soldiers. The next morning, though, her mother’s special
attentions to her because of her first period have deteriorated once again. In the beginning of the novel, Elsa is traveling toward her
childhood home in Friuli; toward the close, she has just arrived in Germany.
She is seeking “evidence, proof” (101). Of what? Elsa means noble in Old German. She is blond. Could her mother
have been German? Since she is half German, does that mean she is half
murderous? Or is she seeking proof that Germany is really beautiful despite
the horrors that came out of it? That she herself is? That all these are true
becomes clearer in the novel’s last pages. Ambiguity seems necessary in this tale of an adult-child’s
sufferings. When we finally learn through Elsa’s thoughts that “the mother
who bore her . . . died soon after her birth” in Germany, from
where she and her father departed after her “early years” (101), an
unsettling shock stirs up all we’ve already absorbed of the little girl’s
story. Her disturbed mind becomes ours with the train of realized possibilities: 1) the disturbed child hallucinated a mother’s
presence; 2) the disturbed adult Elsa plastered her
memory of childhood with the artificial presence of an emotionally
unavailable but physically present birth mother; 3) the disturbed adult Elsa believed her
emotionally unavailable mother died soon after she was born, although this
was not the case. These allow readers to
partake of Elsa’s disorientation. It reminds us that the mother is the
beginning of everyone’s journey, and is the beginning of every woman’s cycle
of journeys throughout her life. Morandini’s Bloodstains deserves placement beside Dante’s Divine Comedy, as an earthly version,
wherein the quest for the Mother nonetheless contains elements of that
internal divine many spiritualists believe lies in every breast. Lenore Baeli Wang Rider College Mary Melfi. Infertility Rites.
Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1991. How a woman defines herself has fluctuated throughout time. But
one constant that remains true is the inevitable link to motherhood. Every
woman is asked this question, “So, when
are you going to have children?” The key word in the novel, Infertility Rites by Mary Melfi is the word “when.” The protagonist, Nina DiFiore, decides she wants to have a
baby. The problem is that she has had several miscarriages. Through this
character, Melfi illustrates how preoccupied a woman can be with infertility.
Trying to have a baby becomes so complicated. When Nina steps inside the
infertility clinic, she steps inside another world. When the doctors probe
and test her, she wonders why she couldn’t be “female enough” to have a baby
without seeking the help of medical science. Nina is a full-time artist and escapes to that world every
chance she can get. She also works part-time for the Institute of Social
Policy and her job, as she puts it, is to be “efficient in the art of
problem-solving.” Her job at the Institute carries over into her personal
life when she tries to solve the problem of getting pregnant and staying
pregnant. For Nina, this problem becomes an obsession. “Didn’t I know the
world was suffering from the ills of over-population? The key to survival lay
in infertility.” Nina compensates for her frustration with tongue in cheek
comments. She continues to say “A fascist sympathizer once hinted on an
afternoon talk show that a large scale war in Africa was just the thing
needed to eliminate the problem (of human pollution). Never mind that one
North American child consumes as much as six African children in the course
of his lifetime.” From Nina’s social comments to her moody and dark art, she
surrounds herself with everything but fresh air and light. Then there is also
her cousin Dora, who is the ideal Italian daughter, her husband who doesn’t
want a baby, and her unfulfilling work at the Institute. Melfi is showing how
a woman can drown in expectation. The one thing that saves Nina is her art.
Even that doesn’t own up to anybody’s expectations, but she doesn’t change
it. She holds true to her need to express herself. Is having a baby a way for
a woman to express herself? The answer lies in the struggle that Melfi
illustrates in between the pages. She doesn’t place the reader next to Nina
but inside her. “I fish in my subconscious for new paintings. I draw charcoal
sketches of the underworld. In it women are sodomized, raped, cut up, stuffed
with old ideas on what constitutes a woman.” Melfi makes it impossible for
you to escape the weight on Nina’s shoulders. Melfi isn’t looking for
sympathy for Nina but for you to feel all the anxiety that she feels. Through the exploration of Nina’s frustrations, there is the
challenge to find happiness. The answer is found in a birth of a different
kind when she talks about her art. “I don’t like landscapes. What counts in
my book are interior landscapes. They always escape definition, like I do.”
Melfi doesn’t want to define a woman according to her fertility but according
to what she wants out of life which is sometimes birth. Barbara Slaga Chicago, Illinois Anthony Valerio. “Bart”: A Life of A.
Bartlett Giamatti by Him and About Him. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1991. My first encounter with
A. Bartlett Giamatti was in graduate school while researching a term paper on
the Italian Renaissance epic. I picked up his book The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (1966), and what
followed was one of the most profound and enjoyable reading experiences of my
life. Here was a book that had none of the superfluous jargon academics are
famous for, just absolute clarity, excellent organization and intellectual
rigor. From that first encounter in 1973 I have always been fascinated by
this man who fervently loved academia and baseball, Florence and Cooperstown,
Dante and Joe DiMaggio. As Giamatti’s passions, skills, and abilities took
him from Professor of English, to President of Yale at 39 years of age, to
president of the National League, and to the office of Commissioner of
Baseball I have always felt that the clarity, organization and intellectual
rigor present in that book I read years before served as a prologue for all
that was to come. In “Bart”: A Life of A.
Bartlett Giamatti by Him and About Him, Anthony Valerio pays homage to
the different personae that were A. Bartlett Giamatti. In editing this book
Valerio masterfully weaved together quotes from Giamatti’s writing about the
Red Sox and Bobby Doerr, about his philosophies of baseball and the significance
of home plate, about the Renaissance epic, teaching and on being the
president of Yale University, with quotes from dignitaries in academia and
baseball who have written about Giamatti. Valerio’s skillful and sensitive
editing gives the reader an excellent insight into the life of this man: from
Renaissance scholar to his shaky beginnings and his ultimate triumph as
president of Yale; from President of the National League to Commissioner of
baseball, and the difficult and suffered decision he made to bar Pete Rose
from the game for life. The book also includes elegant illustrations and
excerpts from the poetry dear to Giamatti during his lifetime. In his introduction, Valerio, who is also the author of Valentino and the Great Italians
(Freundlich Books, 1986), writes the following: His life and work
inspired vivid images and manifested profound thought—images of his heroes
and the places he loved, such as Fenway Park, his father, Martha’s Vineyard,
Bobby Doerr, Dante, Ted Williams. Bart loved the springtime. He loved free
inquiry. He loved America. He was also a hero, an American Renaissance Man.
Family, journalists, students, and colleagues in academia and in baseball,
all view him from their own special angles, with the result that Bart’s life
emerges as fascinating prism—sparkling, multi-faceted, beautiful. Bart is an excellent book which truly celebrates the life of an
“American Renaissance Man.” Paolo Giordano Loyola University Chicago |