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If
Italian-American poetry can be said to exist as a meaningful part of American
literature, it is only as a transitional category. Some kinds of ethnic or
cultural consciousness seem more or less permanent. A contemporary Catholic
poet, for example, is intrinsically no less Catholic than one from the last
century. Nor will an African-American writer today experience the dual
allegiances of black identity less deeply than did his or her predecessors.
But each new generation of Italian-Americans finds its cultural links with
the old country more tenuous. As the Little Italies disappear and families
move to the suburbs, the descendants of Italian immigration gradually lose
their original ethnic identity in mainstream America. Values change subtly
but significantly. Intermarriage becomes the rule rather than the exception.
If a third generation Italian-American speaks Italian, he or she usually
learned it in college, not the kitchen.
Some
recent critics have analyzed the position of Italian-American poets in
sociological terms borrowed from black literary historians. They portray the
Italian-American writer as an individual whose ethnic consciousness
alienates him or her from the mainstream culture. Although this approach can
be enlightening, it is often misleading. The Italian-American writer’s
identity is rooted in history not race. It originated in one central
event—the massive immigration of poor Italians to the United States between
1870 and 1930. The cultural shock waves radiating from this historical
upheaval (which was America’s largest European immigration in the past
century) formed the Italian-American literary consciousness. The concept of
an Italian-American poet is therefore most useful to describe first and
second generation writers raised in the immigrant subculture. It has been
these writers who have used the immigrant experience as their imaginative
point of departure.
Although
Italian-American poetry began in 1805 with the arrival of Mozart’s
librettist, the Venetian writer, Lorenzo da Ponte, it took another century
and a half for enough significant writers to appear to claim the attention of
the English-speaking public. The social and cultural barriers that early
aspiring writers faced were enormous. Not surprisingly, few poets managed to
overcome them. Most immigrants came from the destitute classes of Southern
Italy. Poorly educated, sometimes illiterate, few knew Toscano, the standard literary dialect of written Italian (based
on the Florentine language of Petrarch and Boccaccio). The immigrant’s
literary heritage was usually confined to the lively traditions of a local
dialect. The poetry of the early arrivals—and there is a great deal of
accomplished work—was written mostly in Southern dialects. This heritage
remains almost entirely unexplored, except by a few dedicated scholars
working outside the academic mainstream.
The
first generation of Italian-American writers to work in English made their
most important contributions neither in poetry nor fiction but in radical
politics. Carlo Tresca and Arturo Giovannitti, for example, were both
published poets, but today they are remembered for their social activism.
Their political journalism, which passionately addressed the timeless
concerns of equality and justice, remains more vital than their verse. Selden
Rodman reprinted Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s last speech to the court as verse in
his 1938 New Anthology of Modern Verse,
and Vanzetti’s proud words sustain the pressure of the transcription. Few
poems by his Italian-American contemporaries still read so well.
The best early Italian-American
poetry deals with the excitement and disillusionment of life in this
“new-found land.” The immigrant Emanuel Carnevali (1897–1941) briefly became
a popular American poet before poverty and illness forced him back to the old
country. Disillusioned and
disabled, he wrote, “O Italy, O great boot, / don’t kick me out again!”
The
first Italian-American poet to make a permanent contribution to our
literature was John Ciardi (1916–1986). An indefatigable critic, anthologist,
translator, educator, journalist, and public spokesman, Ciardi became one of
mid-century American poetry’s dominant taste-makers—an unprecedented position
for an Italian-American. He also became modestly wealthy from poetry—another
rare accomplishment about which Ciardi, who had been raised without a father
in terrible poverty, exhibited the unabashed pride typical of his
first-generation contemporaries. Ciardi remains the model Italian-American
poet and man of letters. He has had many followers, though none quite so
versatile.
Today
there are so many interesting poets of Italian descent writing that it is
difficult to draw any generalizations about their diverse work. But in the
venerable tradition of critics leaping in where angels fear to tread, I offer
a few observations.
In
Italian culture one often notices two conflicting impulses—one to preserve
the richness of the past, the other to reject it in search of the new. The
same dialectic between tradition and revolution exists in Italian-American
poetry. Surveying writers of roughly the same generation, one finds both
enlightened traditionalists (like Jerome Mazzaro or Lewis Turco) and lively
iconoclasts (like Gregory Corso or Diane di Prima). Sometimes one sees both
impulses in a single writer like Felix Stefanile or Paul Violi. What one does
not see is aesthetic complacency. Even the traditionalists like Turco (and
Ciardi before him) tend to be as passionate and argumentative as the
revolutionaries.
Despite
the stylistic diversity, one does notice certain underlying themes that unite
the work of first- and second-generation writers. I would cite four central
experiences that haunt—either overtly or subtly—their poetry. First, they
and their families have known genuine poverty both here and in Europe. This
memory informs their political, social, and cultural views of America and
themselves. Their original status as economic and social outsiders in America
also informs their political views. It tends to make them suspicious or
critical of established power. Not surprisingly, several Italian-American
women—most notably Sandra Mortola Gilbert and Maria Mazzioti-Gillan [sic]
—are significant figures in feminist poetry. Second, Italian-American poets
almost inevitably reflect the Roman Catholic culture in which they were
raised. Even if they later rejected the religion, its worldview permeates
their imaginations. One does not often find overtly religious poetry (the
sequences of Peggy Rizza Ellsberg being a noteworthy exception), but the
symbols and archetypes of Catholicism often provide the intellectual
foundations of their verse.
Third,
Italian-American poets have a heightened consciousness of their European
Latin roots. Even those raised in poverty are oddly cosmopolitan. Their
family histories have left them curious outsiders to the often narrowly
nationalistic outlook of mainstream America. While many American poets reject
European influences as distractions from the search for a native voice, most
Italian-American poets view Europe—sometimes in its Modernistic aspects and
sometimes in its older traditions—as a potential source of strength. David
Citino, Jay Parini, and Gerald Costanzo all demonstrate this unself-conscious
sophistication in different ways. One also sees a European consciousness in
the many distinguished translators among Italian-American writers—including
Joseph Tusiani, Michael Palma, Jonathan Galassi, and Stephen Sartarelli, to
mention only a few.
Finally,
there tends to be a strong element of realism in their work, a concern with
portraying a world of common experience rather than the creation of a private
verbal universe. Often this realistic urge expresses itself in the harsh
description of urban life. One sometimes sees the sharp edge of naturalism in
the poetry of W. S. Di Piero, Lucia Maria Perillo, and Felix Stefanile as
strongly as in the cinema of Martin Scorsese or Michael Cimino. Sometimes the
realist impulse depicts the subtler psychological realities of a common
cultural or religious consciousness as in Jerome Mazzaro. Though their
artistic solutions vary, for Italian-American writers, poetry remains a
public art.
Dana Gioia
Postscript
Some
readers may wonder why I have not mentioned Lawrence Ferlinghetti in my list
of influential Italian-American poets. Since there seems to be some confusion
on the question, let me explain in full.
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti was born Lawrence Ferling in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. His
father, Charles Ferling, was reportedly an assimilated Italian immigrant,
who died before his son was born. His mother, Clemence Mendes-Monsanto, a
French-Sephardic Jew, was institutionalized soon after his birth. The young
Lawrence Ferling was raised initially in France by his maternal aunt. His
first language was French. Returning to New York in 1924, the poet was—after
seven months in an orphanage—informally adopted by an older, wealthy WASP
couple in Bronxville, New York. He was educated mainly in exclusive private
schools and eventually studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill and Columbia before returning to France in 1947. He never knew his
Italian family. Lawrence Ferling, did, however, Italianize his name in 1955
for the publication of his first book to symbolize his rebirth as a poet.
Presumably he also wanted to reconnect with his unknown family’s heritage.
While “Ferlinghetti” has become the most famous Italian surname in American
poetry, its owner has no meaningful connection with the Italian-American
immigrant experience. His rich cultural background is French, Sephardic, and
patrician American.
If we do not define Italian-American poetry with
some strictness, we dilute its usefulness. There is no particular value in
applying ethnic categories to an assimilated writer with an Italian surname.
Patricia Storace, for example, has an Italian last name but little Italian
blood and no Italian-American background. She herself dismisses the notion
she is an Italian-American poet. Life experience not a surname is what
determines ethnicity in literature. Otherwise we might as well talk about R.
S. Gwynn and Rodney Jones as “Welsh-American” poets, or Emily Grosholz and
Judith Hemschemeyer as “German-American” poets. If the only place a text
displays ethnicity is in its by-line, then it isn’t an ethnic text.
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July 13, 1992
Dear Dana Gioia:
I found your
article in the Academy of American
Poets Newsletter upsetting because it is so much a denial of any
difference in the way that Italian/Americans are treated in America.
Recently,
Jack Newfield pointed out in a New York
Post article that “Prejudice against Italian/Americans is the most
tolerated intolerance.” He goes on to say that a politically-correct person
would never use the word transvestite instead of cross-dresser, but he or she
wouldn’t be the least bit embarrassed to state that an Italian/ American
politician “must have mob connections.” Newfield goes on to name anti-Italian
bigotry the “velvet virus.”
We only have
to think of what happened to Geraldine Ferraro when she ran for Vice
President and of the comments made about Mario Cuomo to know that prejudice
against Italian/Americans is very real, and the literature which explores
what it means to be an Italian/ American is just as strong and valid as
African/American, Latino, or Asian/American literature.
Your article
implies that there is no prejudice against Italian/ Americans and that in one
or two generations they are totally assimilated and no different from any
W.A.S.P. I would like to remind you that between 1870 and 1940, Italians were
second only to Blacks as victims of lynchings, and in 1891, the biggest mass
lynching in American history of any group was of Italians. You might want to
read about the Ludlow Massacre or the Italian/Americans in Frankfurt Illinois
who were pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night and beaten,
then, their homes were burned. If you think of recent times, the persistence
of Mafia stories about Governor Mario Cuomo, despite the New York Magazine investigative report that revealed there was no
foundation for the Mafia rumors, should be evidence in itself especially when
coupled with the Newsweek
reporter’s comment “who in Mississippi would vote for a Mario anyway?”
In reference
to the Italian/American literature being written today, you should read the
work of Daniela Gioseffi, Joe Papaleo, Fred Gardaphé, Rose Romano, Mary Jo
Bona, Lisa Ruffolo, Rachel Guido De Vries, Arthur Clements, Michelle
Linfante, Anthony Valerio, Diana Cavallo, Anna Monardi, Robert Viscusi and
Helen Barolini, to name only a few of the wonderful, strong, diverse voices
rooted in Italian/American culture. If you wish to separate yourself from
Italian/American life, that is your choice, but I believe that your negation
of the possibility of an Italian/American voice in literature does a disservice
to the writers who have chosen to incorporate their heritage into their
writing.
Sincerely,
Maria MAZZIOTTI Gillan
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