Marisa Frasca's Wild Fennel: Poems and Other Stories

May 16, 2019 540

Thursday May 23 2019. 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. 25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036. "In poems born of the rocky soil of the old country, where children learn to sew in a 'walled-in garden' with 'one potted plant-crown of thorns,' Frasca threads history and myth. She tells of immigrant hope that turns quickly to devastating loss and makes exile real--the self in search of the self.

Writing to her counterpart, Anna, who dies young back in Sicily, and carrying her father's ghost, time feels endless, simultaneous. But Frasca is also a poet of wonder, and this work is alive, visionary, painterly. Here myth isn't an old story, it is the art of transformation, and Frasca embodies an ever-present unfolding."--Anne Marie Macari

"Frasca threads through memories wary of the ways nostalgia scars, seeking antidotes by turning writing into a 'battledress,' and crafting introspection into a means of saving us 'from our ugly stink.' Enter Wild Fennel's 'feral fires' and you will emerge both bruised and blessed."--Mihaela Moscaliuc

Marisa Frasca is the author of Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom. Frasca holds a BA in creative writing from The New School and an MFA in poetry from Drew University. Her poems and translations have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She serves on the Advisory Board of Arba Sicula, a nonprofit organization that preserves and disseminates the Sicilian language, literature, and folklore.

You may be interested