Monday,
March 05,
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
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
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
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
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.,
Tel
718-643-3837
Info. http://www.Gioseffi.com/
The
ANNOTICO Reports
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USA: http://www.ItaliaUSA.com (Formerly
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Annotico
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