Poetry 8

An Annotated Bibliography of Italian American Studies

Page 8: Tagliabue to Wang

Tuccio, Joseph. Fifth Book of Poems. Bedford Hills, NY: Free World Press, 1943.

---. Marianna and Other Poems. Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1947.

---. Tenth Book of Poems. Port Chester, NY: Inspiration Press, 1985.

---. Italy: Country of My Soul. Port Chester, NY: Inspiration Press, 1988.
[Tuccio immigrated to America in 1930 and has produced poems which verify the idea of freedom of speech in America and testify to the author's love of Italy.]

Turco, Lewis. First Poems. Francestown, NH: Golden Quill Press, 1960.

---. The Shifting Web: New and Selected Poems 1957-1989. Fayettville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1989.
[Grounded solidly in English and American traditions, Turco, often called a "poet's poet," writes from an Italian/American heart through a truly American head.]

Tusiani, Joseph. Rind and All: Fifty Poems. New York: The Monastine Press, 1962.

---. The Fifth Season: Poems. New York: Obolensky, 1964.

---. Gente Mia and Other Poems. Stone Park, IL: Italian Cultural Center, 1978.
[Tusiani's poetry, especially in Gente Mia gives voice to the experience of those immigrants who could live but never write poetically.]

Verdicchio, Pasquale. Moving Landscape. Toronto: Guernica, 1985.

---. Nomadic Trajectory. Toronto: Guernica, 1990.

--. Approaches to Absence. Toronto: Guernica, 1994.
[Verdicchio is representative of the newly emerging intellectual who is as at home in philosophy as he is in popular culture. His meditations are often haunting, disconcerting, but always illuminating.]
Viscusi, Robert. An Oration Upon the Most Recent Death of Christopher Columbus. W. Lafayette, IN: VIA Folios, 1993.
[Viscusi speaks of and for many generations and offers an explanation of how and why Italian Americans clung to Columbus in their efforts to be accepted as Americans. He also speaks to the difficulty of clinging to the traditional notion of Columbus as we move into the next century.]
Vitiello, Justin. Vanzetti's Fish Cart. Lewiston, NY: The Mellen Poetry Press, 1991.
[A collection of thirty-two poems which connect "Little Italy" ghettoes, to ancestral villages and the wide open lands of strangers in between.]
---. Subway Home: Franklin Lakes, NJ: Lincoln Springs Press, 1994.
[Featuring lyrics and prose poems on the experience of growing up Italian American in Queens and travelling to Sicily.]
Wang, Lenore Baeli. Born in the Year of the Pink Sink. San Francisco: Malafemmina Press, 1991.
[Wang's poetry speaks of the past with the voice of the future. She is a keen observer of the details that preserve history and rewrite it at the same time. Her poetry shows the power that literature has to connect generations through the imagination.]