Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the English into Italian by Elisa Biagini. Winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize. "What draws me to Gerry LaFemina's poems is how much of the world they contain: Brooklyn streets, race-tracks, Vietnam, a boy's imagined transgressions, family dramas. What is compelling is the tension between the speaker's urge to understand and the mystery that resists explanation—the partial understandings, the misunderstandings of childhood.... Public and private collide, intersect, as events and images become more difficult to reconcile, to describe. LaFemina's poems ripple with erotic desire, the budding sexuality of young boys, the lure of the nape hidden under a woman's hair, the interiority of the boy who'd slid into the sleeve of the dark suit left by his father. It's a rich world...a gritty and tender gamble"—Donna Masini.

Author City: FROSTBURG, MD USA

Gerry LaFemina is the author of six collections of poetry, including GRAFFITI HEART (winner of the Anthony Piccione Prize in Poetry), THE WINDOW FACING WINTER, THE PARAKEETS OF BROOKLYN (winner of the Bordighera Prize), and VANISHING HORIZON; two collections of prose poems; and WISH LIST, a collection of short stories. A former punk musician and a former member of the Associated Writing Programs Board of Directors, he directs the Frostburg Center for Creative Writing at Frostburg State University, where he also teaches. He divides his time between Maryland and New York.

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