By Robert Viscusi
Book Presentation and readings
In the epic poem Ellis Island whose structure corresponds to the hours in a year, Viscusi portrays a world of perpetual change and taxing work, though one interrupted by moments of delicate hope. The ambitious poem explores the Italian American immigrant experience primarily the emotional detachment physical location brings. In lucid, vivid verse, Viscusi compares the different approaches to such staple concepts as freedom and civilization in America and Italy, the latter of which, in Italy, is “the art of building walls.” Yet this work reaches beyond a compare-and-contrast of disparate social ecosystems and into the subtleties of what an individual immigrant must determine for himself and, accordingly, what he must disregard from the standing narratives on cultures he has known.
Robert Viscusi is professor of English and executive officer of the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities at Brooklyn College. The author of seven books and many scholarly articles, Viscusi has won an American Book award for his novel Astoria, the Premio Giuseppe Acerbi for his book Buried Caesars and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing, and the Brooklyn College Faculty Creative Writing Award for his poem Ellis Island. Viscusi is the editor of the American edition of Francesco Durante’s anthology Italoamericana: Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943 (Fordham UP, 2014). Ellis Island is published in English by Bordighera Press, New York and in a bilingual Italian/English edition by abrigliasciolta editore, Varese.
At ellisislandpoem.com, readers can explore the Random Sonnet Generator, an important feature of the poem