Monday, March 05,

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poetry's "Primo" Italian Influence, BUT Not Godfather):

The ANNOTICO Report 

 

Lawrence Ferllinghetti, outstanding Italian American author, appeared on the Cover of the March /April issue of Poets and Writers Magazine  as "Poetry's  Godfather" with an interview inside'

 

His interview is good and complimentary, but  they slipped seriously when they labeled  Ferllinghetti  as Poetry's "Godfather" with all its  Mafia connotation. They don't call Langston Hughes the "Pimp Daddy" of Poetry, or Stanley  Kunitz "Top Yid /Kosher Nostra " of Poetry, etc. using  Negative stereotypical descriptive terms.

 

Daniela Gioseffi, another of our talented Italian American writers, sent Poet's and Writers a well phrased letter:

 

 

LETTERS: Poets & Writers Magazine, Feb. 16, 2007

 

Dear Mary Gannon and Kevin Larimer, Editors:

 

How good it was to see Lawrence Ferlinghetti who has done so much for American literature, and who is widely read and respected for his poetry, featured with his syllabic Italian American name on your March/April cover, but how sad to see him dubbed with the awful Hollywood stereotype of Italian Americans as Poetrys Godfather? 

 

Though Mario PuzosGodfather is the bestselling book of all time, Puzo himself admitted hed never met any Mafiosi and based the Godfathers main character on his immigrant mother who is the heroine of his best novel, the one he himself thought was his finest work, The Fortunate Pilgrim, about ordinary, hardworking Italian immigrants. He starved writing that book despite its great reviews from fine authors, because America always wants to dub us Italian-Americans with a Mafios stereotype regardless of the fact that our ethnic group has  less than .01% involved with organized crim e and has no higher a percentage of its people involved in crime than any other ethnic group.  Fact. 75 percent of Americans continuet o associate Italian names with organized criminality because of the huge bucks made by Hollywood and television industrialists who perpetuate this stereotype.

 

How many Americans know that 600,000 innocent Italian immigrants were rounded up and put in detention camps in this country during World War II, as were 120,000 Japanese, but unlike the Japanese American community, the Italian American has never received an apology or reparations for having their homes confiscated, while imprisoned in concentration camps, even while their American-born sons were fighting with the Allied Powers.

 

A fine writers magazine like Poets & Writers, sensitive to problems of ethnicity, should avoid a stereotypic term like Poetrys Godfather" for its  implications, on a vernable intellectual like Lawrence Ferlinghetti who has chosen to write with his fathers surnameeven though he was raised by Sephardic-French Jews on his mothers side after his fathers death.

 

Ferlinghetti has done much for us Italians by forging his way into American literary life with his syllabic Italian name. When I began publishing and was among the first authors listed in the earliest P&W Directory of American Poets & Writers in the early 1970s, mine was the only female Italian name, along with Diane DiPrimas on The Coast, to forge its way into the mainstream of American poetry.

 

Puzo died lamenting his inability to promote The Fortunate Pilgrim over The Godfather, as the image of the Italian in America, but the Mafia stereotype falsely overblown, mytholgized, and manufactured, as it is, makes box office bonanzas. It would have been so much nicer to see Lawrence Ferlinghetti dubbed Poetry's Entrepreneur."

 

Ferlinghetti certainly deserves recognition for all he has done, but like John Ciardi, he has never fully received his due and should have had a Pulitzer or a National Book Award,too.

 

Grazie for featuring him on your cover.

 

Yours truly,

Daniela Gioseffi, Friend of Poets & Writers, Inc.,

Brooklyn Heights

57 Montague St. 8-G

Brooklyn, NY 11201-3356

Tel 718-643-3837

Info. http://www.Gioseffi.com/

 

 

 

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