Wild Fennel: Poems and Other Stories: 137 (VIA Folios)

Poetry. Italian Studies. In poems born of the rocky soil of the old country where children learn to sew in a walled-in-garden with one potted plant--crown of thorns Frasca threads history and myth. She tells of immigrant hope that turns so quickly to devastating loss and makes exile real--the self in search of the self. Writing to her counterpart Anna who dies young back in Sicily and carrying her fathers ghost time feels endless simultaneous. But Frasca is also a poet of wonder and this work is alive visionary painterly. Here myth isnt an old story it is the art of transformation and Frasca embodies an ever-present unfolding.--Anne Marie MacariLike mulberries that both stain and heal these luscious poems and stories insist on our culpability in the misery of familiar or distant others while also consoling and nurturing with sensorial and sensual pleasures only a poet like Frasca living within the tension between assimilation and alienation between worlds that disorient & enlighten can deliver. Frasca threads through memories wary of the ways nostalgia scars seeking antidotes by turning writing into a battledress and crafting introspection into a means of saving us from our ugly stink. Enter WILD FENNELs feral fires and you will emerge both bruised and blessed loving anise seeds and the smell of fox the way one should on their own terms.--Mihaela Moscaliuc