Felix
Stefanile: sample poems from
THE COUNTRY OF ABSENCE
TAKING
SIDES WITH JOHN CIARDI
| THE
DANCE AT ST. GABRIEL'S | CARMEN
| HOW
I CHANGED MY NAME, FELICE | THE
AMERICANIZATION OF THE IMMIGRANT
 Felix Stefanile was
bom in 1920 in Long Island City, New York. He was educated in
the public schools and at CCNY. A World War 11 veteran, he found
employment after the war in a series of clerical jobs until 1950,
when he began his eleven-year stint in the New York State Department
of Labor. There he eventually became a middle functionary in worker's
claims and entitlements. In 1954 he and his wife Selma started
the poetry magazine Sparrow, which is now
one of the oldest poetry journals in the United States. His essay,
"The Imagination of the Amateur," which expresses
his ideas on independent literary publishing in American history
was published in 1966. The essay gained him a National Endowment
for the Arts Prize in 1967, and has been anthologized. In
1961, Felix Stefanile was invited by Purdue University to serve
as Visiting Poet and Lecturer for one year. At the end of his
tenure, the university asked him to stay on as a member of the
English faculty. He taught freshman composition, survey courses,
and a Poetry Writing class that drew campus-wide attention. In
1969 he was appointed to a Full Professorship, and in 1973 was
awarded the Standard OH of Indiana Prize for Best Teacher. His
poetry awards include the Emily Clark Balch Prize of theVirginia
Quarterly Review , 1972. In 1997 he was the first recipient
of the recently established John Ciardi Award for life-long
achievement in Italian American poetry.Books by Stefanile include:
Poetry: The Dance at St. Gabriel's; In That Far Country;
East River Nocturne; A Fig Tree in America; T'he Patience that
Befell; River Full of Craft. Translations:I Were Fire: 34 Sonnets
of Cecco Angiolieri; The Blue Moustache: Some Italian Futurist
Poets; Umberta Saba: 31 Poems.
TAKING
SIDES WITH JOHN CIARDI
--some
words on minus-American poetry
When
Robert Lowell hyphenated you--
Italian,
hyphen sign, American--
to
praise your poetry, your answer ran
in
rough-house expletives. Your passion flew,
and
subsequently in an interview
you
squelched his harmless seeming little hyphen
as
not the way to write out citizen.
How
culture-vultures smiled at the to-do.
If
this is poetry, as may be true,
it's
also punctuation, not too thin
a
point or line for morals that you drew.
We
all know grammar can stick like a pin,
and
those who think my point is overdrawn,
they
are no friends of yours, nor of mine, John.
THE
DANCE AT ST. GABRIEL'S
for
Louis Otto
We
were the smart kids of the neighborhood
where,
after high school, no one went to school,
you
NYU and I CCNY.
We
eyed each other at St. Gabriel's
on
Friday nights, and eyed each other's girls.
You
were the cute, proverbial good catch
--
just think of it, nineteen -- and so was I,
but
all we had was moonlight on our minds.
This
made us cagey; we would meet outside
to
figure how to dump our dates, go cruising.
In
those hag-ridden and race-conscious times
we
wanted to be known as anti-fascists,
and
thus get over our Italian names.
When
the war came, you volunteered, while I
backed
in by not applying for deferment,
for
which my loving family named me Fool.
Once,
furloughs overlapping, we met up,
the
Flight Lieutenant and the PFC;
we
joked about the pair we made, and sauntered.
That
Father Murray took one look at us,
and
said our Air Force wings were the only wings
we'd
ever earn. We lofted up our beers.
Ah,
Louis, what good times we two have missed.
Your
first time up and out the Germans had you,
and
for your golden wings they blew you down.
CARMEN
(for,
Daniela Gioseffl)
Carmen,
you were seven. You sought me after school,
just
came alongside as I marched away,
and
fcll in stride. I caught your side-long glances.
Beneath
your bangs and spit-curls you were pale,
your
dark eyes shimmered, you were all eyes.
You
talked a blue streak for a stranger,
and
I hardly answered. I was shy of words.
You
said you were afraid of our old streets,
men
shouting at trucks backing in and out
of
those huge factory gates, the eerie ring
of
cobblestones, as in a spooky movie.
Day
after day we walked each other home
to
that last corner, where you turned away.
You
said you'd cross the street, but I must watch.
I
never looked for you except the day
you
didn't show up, and I walked home alone.
I
wondered if you'd found another friend.
Days
later then I heard, while in a store,
holding
the bread for mother, you were dead.
There
were those women at the spice-laden counter,
saying
your name in passing, as at an altar.
I
listened in a daze, and looked for mother.
She
said that we would stop to light a candle
on
the way home at St. Mary-of-the sea.
There
at the railing I picked out my candle,
and
we said the ten Hail Marys, the Glory Be.
As
we walked home my heart raced far ahead,
light-years
ahead, I know, to this bright moment,
for
now like a godess, stronger than Diptheria,
that
godess of dead children, Carmen, you light my mind.
HOW
I CHANGED MY NAME, FELICE
In
Italy a man's name, here a woman's,
transliterated
so I went to school
for
seven years, and no one told me different.
The
teachers hardly cared, and in the class
Italian
boys who knew me said Felice,
although
outside they called me feh-LEE-tchay.
I
might have lived, my noun so neutralized,
another
seven years, except one day
I
broke a window like nobody's girl,
and
the old lady called a cop, whose sass
was
wonderfiil when all the neighbors smiled
and
said that there was no boy named Felice.
And
then it was it came on me, my shame,
and
I stepped up, and told him, and he grinned.
My
father paid a quarter for my sin,
called
me inside to look up in a book
that
Felix was American for me.
A
Roman name, I read. And what he said
was
that no Roman broke a widow's glass,
and
fanned my little neapolitan ass.
THE
AMERICANIZATION OF THE IMMIGRANT
Your
words, Genoveffa,
through
the open window,
telling
me once again what to buy at the store--
don't
forget, don't forget--
aroma
of fresh bread almost a halo.
That
was a long time ago.
I
never forgot.
Like
Dante
I
have pondered and pondered
the
speech I was born to,
lost
now, mother gone,
the
whole neighborhood bull-dozed,
and
no one to say it on the TV,
that
words are dreams.
These poems Copyright © 2000 by Felix Stefanile, from his
books, THE CROSSING OF ABSENCE, and THE DANCE AT ST.
GABRIEL'S. All rights reserved.
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