Knowing the Moment by Emanuel di Pasquale

Authored by Emanuel di Pasquale

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Love is the Mouth

Love is the mouth
that tears rind,
that chews pulp
and sucks juices.
Love is the mouth
that swallows seeds.
And love is the mouth
that bitches
at orange bits
stuck in its teeth.

From the Introduction
There is something elemental about the poetry of Emanuel di Pasquale, an immediacy that comes from a direct and visceral relation to whatever he is writing about-whether nature or human interaction. It is the kind of directness that di Pasquale admires in Whitman and Dickinson-evidence that he, like them, has more than an academic acquaintance with the world and its changes. He has experienced them and understands how to make us experience them, too, through words.

About the author:
Emanuel di Pasquale

I was born in Ragusa, Sicily, in 1943, and came to America, by ship, in December of 1956.
My mother, a clairvoyant, had a vision: if she brought me to America, I would accomplish great things. So she did. I went to Sleepy Hollow High School, in Tarrytown, New York, and graduated in three years. Then I went to Adelphi University, English major, and then went to NYU, Greenwich Village, for a master’s plus in English. From 1966 to ’68 I taught English at one of the original ‘Negro Colleges,’ Elizabeth State University in North Carolina. In 68 I moved to Middlesex County College, NJ, where I am still teaching.

Book Publications
My first poetry book was:
Genesis (BOA Editions, 1980)
Then came:
The Silver Lake Love Poems (Bordighera Press)
Escapes the Night (Gradiva Publications)
Cartwheel to the Moon (a book for children, Cricket Books, 2003)
Europa (Gradiva Publication, 2006)
Writing Anew: New and Selected Poems (Bordighera, 2007)
Siciliana (Bordighera Press, 2010)
Harvest (Bordighera Press, 2011)
Out of Stars and Sand (Gradiva Publications, 2012)
Love Lines (Bordighera Press, 2013)
The Ocean’s Will (Guernica, 2013)
Self-portrait (The New York Quarterly Press, 2014)

Prizes
The Bordighera Poetry Prize for translating Joe Salerno book, The Magnolia Tree, into Italian.
The Raiziss de/Palchi Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for translating the poetry of Silvio Ramat.

Translation
Among my many translations from the Italian is Dante’s La Vita Nuova (Xenos Books, 2012)

Editor
I am the editor-in-chief of my college’s literary journal (Middlesex County College). For a number of years, I was the poetry editor of Chelsea, a NYC literary journal.