Emanuel
di Pasquale: Poems from
The Silver Lake Love Poems
I
| IV | V
| XIII | XIV
| XXIV
 Emanuel di Pasquale has published poems in American Poetry
Review, Sewanee Review, and many anthologies
and textbooks. BOA Editions published a volume of his poems entitled
Genesis, pictured below, reprinted 1997 by Jostro Publications,
P.O. Box 403, Edison, NJ 08818-0403. Bordighera has just
published his love poems sequence The Silver Lake Love
Poems. He has also translated numerous poets from English
into Italian and from Italian into English. His translations include:Song
of the Tulip Tree, by Joe Salerno, winner of the l998 Bordighera
Poetry Prize, a bilingual edition; Sharing a Trip, Selected
Poems, by Silvio Ramat,forthcoming from Bordighera Press;
and Carlo della Corte's The
Voyage Ends Here, (Gradiva Publications:Box 831,
Stony Brook, NY 11790) In 2000, Emanuel di Pasqule won
the Sonia Raiziss-dePalchi Translation Prize from the Academy
of American Poets.
Emanuel
di Pasquale is pictured center with other poets at the Poets
House Bordighera Prize Ceremony.
|
Dana
Gioia wrote:"Two thousand years ago a Sicilian immigrant
poet named Theocritus invented the pastoral--a mode of lyrical
poetry in which a sophisticated, urban imagination recaptures
the innocence of life rooted in the natural another Sicilian poet
recreates the pastoral in American terms in the finely observed
and delicate lyrics that make up The Silver Lake Love Poems.
At once innocent and sophisticated, urban and pastoral, Emanuel
di Pasquale creates poetry that is timeless and direct.
The
following are poems from THE SILVER LAKE POEMS © 2000 Emanuel
diPasqule, Bordighera Press.
 I
Brother
of Achilles,
you,
sad face in your window,
lights
behind you
"at
dusk...lonely man..."
I
can see you in your white shirt.
Try
to see goodness in your friends.
(Even
Agamemnon in his
thickheaded
stupidity
had
a feel for the gods.
 IV
I
struggle in the mountains
thinking
of you,
at
times putting myself
in
your small room next to the bathroom,
typing
your poems,
playing
my flute,
cooking
eggplant,
arranging
beach plums,
walking
my small dog along the shore
at
dusk.
V
Tresure
the divine in you,
the
silences,
the
look at the stars,
the
lonely ocean swims at dawn,
your
morning music,
Pavarotti
singing Christmas songs in May,
your
bare feet
on
linoleum.
XIII
I
played with my children
last
night, wheeling under the stars.
The
last one to get dizzy and fall
down
won. Guess?
(You
may keep or chuck this photo--
taken
"before the fall"
sitting
on a fence on a
Virginia
horse farm. Even then
my
ass was flat.)
XIV
Walking
along the north star
in
the dark. Geese gossip.
Ice
amoebas across causeway.
Deer
in vacant lot.
The
moon, only half a person,
has
fallen down on his back.
XXIV
You
must understand-I adore my children
and
they have always come first, for me, I guess,
not
for them. I might die without them.
I
might also die without my woods and flowers
and
small dog. (When you walk on the beach,
I
am waling in the woods thinking of you
walking
on the beach.) I am part of these low
hills,
this ash, oak, and hickory. I
know
I have been too long at the edge
of
this still glacial lake (where my mother
grew
up), and I want to change, but, dear,
I
cannot tear myself from here for good.
(Please
tell those gods to quit
pummeling
me.)
Copyright
© 2000 by Emanuel di Pasquale and Via Folios/ Bordighera
Press
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