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| Frank and Claudia |
Everything that's ever been said to me about Frank Samperi was always out of respect and affection for a poet who'd been unjustly disprized in his own day. I have Ed Baker to thank for introducing the name to me a few years back, Samperi mentioned within the context of a discussion about the Italo-American experience. In Ed's estimation Samperi
is the Italo-American poet. But he was also the orphaned poet temperamentally unsuited to crowds and affiliations; a lover of spiritual Truth who'd served his country in Korea and paid a terrible price in terms of its post-traumatic effects: the poet with the purest lyrical heart heartlessly relegated, as he was bound to be in the Objectivist age of Louis Zukofsky, to virtual non-existence. His allegiance to Dante made him all but ignored. I've never known a poet bowed as low by the hard reality of an almost total literary abandonment.
And I've never been more deeply moved, at the same time, by the filial duties of a daughter who's given considerable time, energies and devotion to the legacy of a parent's both published and unpublished works: even moved myself to write my own literary biography of Frank Samperi. I am happy to say I'll be attending the 'Trilogy' book launch in March at
Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA where I'll join Claudia and friends in what will be a "Frank Samperi celebration". The launch of the new Skysill Press 'Trilogy' will take place on 10 March, Sunday at 4:00 pm. Please see Claudia's
blog for more details.
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| Beyond Baroque |
