{"id":633,"date":"2017-04-21T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T14:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/italianamericana.ysu.edu\/wordpress\/?p=633"},"modified":"2017-04-21T14:54:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T14:54:00","slug":"barbara-poti-crooker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/?p=633","title":{"rendered":"Barbara Poti Crooker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: large\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:1;text-indent:-3\"><strong>Reflections on Immigration, Identity, and Poetry<\/strong><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-indent:30px\">\n<p>I\u2019m thinking about immigrants and immigration right now, as every day it seems one of the presidential candidates is calling for building a huge wall, deporting illegals, raising our quotas, etc. etc. And yet, indigenous Americans aside, didn\u2019t we all come from somewhere else? And wasn\u2019t it a huge struggle and hugely brave of our ancestors to attempt the trip? I\u2019m the grandchild of immigrants, from southern Italy on my father\u2019s side (Emilio Poti) and from Scotland via Canada on my mother\u2019s (Isabelle Smith), and these two contrasting strains of inheritance\/ DNA have made me who I am today. . . . I\u2019ve written about this: \u201cI look like I am ready \/ to dance the tarantella in a dusty square \/ in Naples, where half my grandparents \/ came from. And I am also the woman \/ behind her in the Scottish dress, a primary \/ plaid, hair the color of shortbread, eyes the color \/ of tea, the other half of my DNA\u201d (\u201cTwo Young Women, the Yellow Dress and the Scottish Dress [Henri Matisse, 1941]\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-indent:30px\">\n<p>My father, as the child of immigrants, was focused on assimilation, which meant that I grew up apart from my heritage, as he was estranged from his family (partly because of his \u201cmixed marriage\u201d). But there was a thaw when I was in college, and so as a young adult I was able to learn about and become part of a large, warm extended family. My grandmother, Annuciata (Emma) Cuccaro Poti, was always part of my life, and I cherish her stories while at the same time, I regret the questions I didn\u2019t know to ask. Some years after her death, I tried to find information about her coming to America via the Ellis Island website, but came up blank. On the advice of a cousin of my father\u2019s (I knew the year and the name of the ship), I went back to the Ellis Island site, only this time, I looked on the ship\u2019s manifest. There I found my grandmother, her sisters, and her mother, all listed as \u201cbaggage,\u201d because they were women. Here is the end of a poem I wrote about this, pondering their journey: \u201cHow could they imagine \/ a passport, red and gold, the towering stone forests of the terra nova \/ that would one day fill the horizon past the railing of the SS Nord America, \/ where a small eleven-year-old girl, my grandmother, recorded only \/ as part of the baggage of her uncle Gaetano, finally reaches the shore\u201d (\u201cThe Map of the World, 1630, by Henricus Hondrius\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-indent:30px\">\n<p>They didn\u2019t come to steal jobs from other Americans; they came because they were starving. And also because they had skills, as tailors and seamstresses. My grandmother worked in alterations in the big Bonwit Teller store in Boston into her late eighties. Among the many things she taught me was the virtue of patience: \u201cShe taught me how to sew, \/ made me rip out mistakes, fix crooked seams, taught me everything \/ I needed about editing and revision: \u201cif something \u2018s worth doing, it \u2018s worth doing well. \/ Submission, rejection, submission, rejection, pacienza, pacienza (\u201cWrapping Paper\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-indent:30px\">\n<p>My grandmother was also a talented knitter; I have a three-part poem that uses knitting as a metaphor for each generation, ending with these lines: \u201cI take words and knit them back in poems. \/ Something could be made of this\u201d (\u201cKnitting\u201d). It\u2019s not a huge leap to realize the connections between sewing, knitting, domestic needlework (my grandmother also did biancheria) and the struggle to pin meaning to an image, patch and darn early drafts, untangle skeins of memory, twist a thin filament into something beautiful, into a poem. My family is also unusual in that a third cousin who did some genealogy found that although a village near Napoli was the point of embarkation for the Potis, the family had originally come from Corsica, and prior to that, from mainland France, probably Brittany. A strong Celtic gene would explain, I think, my blue eyes and red-haired children. From these forbears, and from my mother\u2019s side, I think I\u2019ve picked up another valuable trait, which is stubbornness. It\u2019s not easy being a writer today\u2014you need a hefty dose of stubbornness to not become discouraged by the weight of rejection we all must bear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-indent:30px\">\n<p>The final gift from my immigrant ancestors is love: love of food, love of gardening, love of art. This is the wellspring from which I drink. I have many ekphrastic poems, where words have a conversation with painting. And I have many poems on food, including this one on zucchini which ends my fourth book: \u201cIn Corsica, my ancestors weeded \/ around your roots with zappas, \/ leaned on them to survey their zolas, \/ small plots, hoed them smooth \/ as a Zamboni clears the ice . . . .\u201d (\u201cZucchini\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: large\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:1;text-indent:-3\"><strong>Sketch for \u2018Le Bonheur de Vivre,\u2019 1905<\/strong><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:0;text-indent:-3\"><em>The Happiness of Life, Henri Matisse<\/em><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"padding-left:175px\">So, this is a schematic, a long smear of teal on the left,<br \/>\nsoft greens, synthetic blues, glowing golds mixed with<br \/>\nhard mineral pinks filling out the rest of the frame. Later,<br \/>\nthis sketch will realize itself into a scene of bathers, serpentine<br \/>\nart nouveau curves lounging on the yellow lawn, the tropical<br \/>\njungle foliage exploding behind them. But who can describe<br \/>\nthe color of happiness? Could it be days like this, clear,<br \/>\nmellow, no fogs of loss creeping in? Days when not much<br \/>\nhappens, the October sun coaxing gold from the leaves,<br \/>\nthe earth turning one more notch? Let the busy world spin.<br \/>\nLet me sit here as the afternoon ripens. If happiness is a color,<br \/>\nlet it be tactile, tangible, something I can eat with a spoon.<br \/>\nBecause all too soon, there will be Death, sitting in the corner,<br \/>\nnursing his cognac. Let me lick up all the sweetness while I can.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:1;text-indent:-3\"><strong>Lighthouse and Buildings, Portland Head, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 1921<\/strong><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:1;text-indent:-3\"><em>Edward Hopper for Linnea<\/em><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"padding-left:175px\">This April day\u2019s as golden as the Allagash beer we drank<br \/>\non that wharf in Portland; the translucent plate of oysters,<br \/>\nthe sunlit wedge of lemon\u2014You drove me out to Portland Head<br \/>\nto see the lighthouse Hopper painted, although walking was difficult\u2014<br \/>\nyour labored breath, your stiffened joints, your gimpy heart\u2014<br \/>\nSo we sat on the rocks outside the frame, breathing in the salt air,<br \/>\nholding our faces up to the sun. Your red hair, brighter than the signal<br \/>\nlamp calling the sailors home. I\u2019d left a bad winter behind, so much snow<br \/>\nwe thought there\u2019d still be piles left in the blue shadows come July.<br \/>\nBut there we were, on a perfect spring day, the sky the nacre of the inside<br \/>\nof a shell, the ocean laid against the horizon like a knife edge, our backs<br \/>\nresting on the jetty\u2019s warm rocks. The buff and tan meadow grass<br \/>\nexhaled with the wind.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:175px\">And then, years later, an email with the header: sad news, and I don\u2019t want<br \/>\nto open it. Grief unhinges me like a shellfish. Hopper said All I ever wanted to do<br \/>\nwas paint sunlight on the side of a barn. Or on a lighthouse. Look what he does<br \/>\nwith his surfaces. Look how the two of us still sit there, beyond the borders,<br \/>\npart of the painting, whose subject is light.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size: large\"><\/p>\n<ul style=\"line-height:1;text-indent:-3\"><strong>Word Search<\/strong><\/span><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"padding-left:175px\">This day draws the story in desultory,<br \/>\nthe slow plodding narrative of the snow.<br \/>\nIt takes apart collection, finds the low<br \/>\nhaunting notes of a cello within. It sees<br \/>\nthat silent and listen are one and the same,<br \/>\nthat within its cage of letters, hearth contains<br \/>\nboth heat and earth. Be alert. A kind word<br \/>\nis hidden in sword. A golfer\u2019s stance<br \/>\nlies in the distance. Golf written backwards<br \/>\nis flog. Refer has it both ways, coming<br \/>\nand going. If you turn wolf inside out,<br \/>\nyou get flow, clear water running down<br \/>\nto the sea, beside which sheep<br \/>\nmay safely graze, by the desultory<br \/>\nwaters, on the earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflections on Immigration, Identity, and Poetry I\u2019m thinking about immigrants and immigration right now, as every day it seems one of the presidential candidates is calling for building a huge wall, deporting illegals, raising our quotas, etc. etc. And yet, indigenous Americans aside, didn\u2019t we all come from somewhere else? And wasn\u2019t it a huge &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"readmore-btn\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/?p=633\">+<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-poets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/italianamericana\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}