MISSING MADONNAS begins with the lunar arrival of its author, Gil Fagiani, who throughout this collection explores mythical Madonnas, nonnas, and urban addiction and redemption for a portrait of a life lived in pain and triumph. Dedicated to his Orlandini family, this book, first posthumous, is the final in a trilogy-CHIANTI IN CONNECTICUT and STONE WALLS-from a first generation American whose poetry transcends the conventional visions of the post-war 50's, the turbulent 60's, and the bitter tenderness of a life that ended much too soon.
About the Author :
Gil Fagiani (1945-2018) grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. He was a translator, essayist, short-story writer, and poet. His work has been translated into French, Greek, Italian, and Spanish, and his translations have appeared in such anthologies as A New Map: The Poetry of Migrant Writers in Italy, edited by Mia Lecomte and Luigi Bonaffini; Poets of the Italian Diaspora, edited by Luigi Bonaffini and Joseph Perricone; and Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943, edited by Francesco Durante and Robert Viscusi (American Edition). His books include MISSING MADONNAS, STONE WALLS, and CHIANTI IN CONNECTICUT, all from Bordighera Press.
Review :
In this latest volume of the author's monumental chronicle of the Italian-American experience, Gil Fagiani manages to honor his own life struggles and those of his ancestors in a way that touches the heart without whitewash or sentimentality. With wit, economy, and a 20/20 eye for detail, Fagiani's immigrant poems flicker like old black-and-white newsreels before giving way to vivid, color-drenched glimpses of the turbulent '60s and '70s. One can only hope that, with his untimely passing, Gil Fagiani now walks alongside the souls so beautifully rendered in these pages.
--Chris Belden, author of Shriver
"I long for a past / that never was" writes one of the speakers in Gil Fagiani's Missing Madonnas, and yet there are few regrets in this collection. Instead, Gil's inimitable voice, uncanny for its measures of bemusement, grit, and precision, lights our way from "cuore" to "heart" and back again with just the right balance of humor and pathos, marking a path from life's little absurdities to its gallant struggles: the Sicilian man who accidentally eats the ashes of his American brother, the beautiful wife of "Day Trip in Sicily" who magically does not combust while over-fueling a kerosene lamp, the disillusionment of the poet who discovers his nonna supported Mussolini's assault on Ethiopia with her gold. For every poem that resists sentiment, Fagiani offers us sustained beauty: the mother who carries her disabled son on her back, the young man who finds his way back from addiction, the small girl gripping her cardboard suitcase as she leaves her village behind. Missing Madonnas is that rare book of poems we want to read from cover to cover in one sitting, but whose lyricism, like the slow descent of the sunflowers of Capo D'Orlando that Fagiani describes at end of day, recedes and bursts again with love for our closely observed and ordinary lives.
--Julia Lisella, author of Terrain and Always
Gil Fagiani, poet laureate of the streets, of life so raw it bleeds, of veins popped like the full moon. The breath of words that is this book, first posthumous--might as well start at the beginning--his birth certificate, a piece of sheet music. In Italian, English, Sicilian, Lancianese, in poetry and prose, one by one, meal by meal, Fagiani's extended family comes to life, commedia dell'arte in poetry, mamma and nonnas, papa, nonnos, zias and zios, girlfriends and all. Missing Madonnas is a family autobiography written in pain and passion like all his books, a language of scalding truth.
--Bob Holman, founder, Bowery Poetry Club, Endangered Language Alliance
