Rina Ferrarelli - The Bread Wreath - Emigration poetry - Italian-American Poetry

The Bread We Ate; Rina Ferrarelli

Guernica Editions, Spring 2012

The Bread Wreath

When my sons were little,
they wanted Wonder Bread
instead of Italian,
afraid to be different.
Then they discovered
that anything Italian
was good, fashionable.
And now they’re grown up.
They ask about the past,
that other country,
“familiar and strange.”
And sometimes I tell them.
On Sunday my brother
stopped by the Bread Works
on the way over
and bought us a collùra
to have with our dinner.
"Still warm from the oven,"
deliciously fragrant
as only that kind of bread can be.
As we broke it into pieces
and passed it around the table
I told my children
about the seven wreaths of bread
my mother gave to the poor
on the anniversary of his death
to eat in remembrance
of my father, and of the six men
who had died with him.

Old bread house in San Giovanni in Fiore; photography Salvatore Mirarchi © copyright, 2000

Rina Ferrarelli was born in San Giovanni in Fiore but she emigrated to USA vhen she was fifteen.

She has published a chapbook, Dreamsearch (Malafemmina Press, 1992), and a full-length book of original poems, Home Is a Foreign Country (Eadmer Press, 1996); three books of translation Light Without Motion (Owl Creek Press, 1989), I Saw the Muses (Guernica, 1997) and Winter Fragments: Selected Poems of Bartolo Cattafi, (Chelsea Editions, 2006; her translation Light without Motion received the Italo Calvino Prize. Her work has also appeared in many journals and anthologies, including American Sports Poems (Orchard Books, 1988), Artful Dodge, Chelsea, Hudson Review, and International Quarterly. She teaches English and translation theory at the University of Pittsburgh.

Links

Rina Ferrarelli | Mediterranean Poetry

Rina Ferrarelli | World Biographical Encyclopedia

Rina Ferrarelli - Rina Ferrarelli Poems | Best Poems

Featured Poet: Rina Ferrarelli: A Few Words on "Linens" on JSTOR

Rina Ferrarelli ( of Caketrain Issue 01)

The Bread We Ate - Rina Ferrarelli - Google Books

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