From Joe Papaleo on Vanzetti's Fish Cart

Starting the book I asked myself, how come writers with this high level of ability are not known? What is about being Italo American in theme that might have something to do with it?

I then proceeded to read the boo, through. It is, but for one or two poems, poetry of the highest order and original to boot. The first poem (Prologue) made me yelp inwardly with joy-- the kind of thing I have never been able to do in poetry and which turned my writing life to fiction: id est, I could not write a poem and leave out enough.

Then there is the poetry of human irony and poignancy, the poems about the lost sister (that last line as if we had lost a plant, domestic, ironic, then very disturbing in its depths of insight into human survival instincts.

"Letter to a cretan flutemaker" is the poem I find the absolute highest in that ability at compression. Remarkable poem. In that high-art tradition yet without a parody englishy world!

All the other poems that are moments in Italy make up an odyssey on the soul, but a special one because this soul is divided, has two identities and perhaps two souls. What fantastic poems!