Light at the Seam, a new collection from North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti, is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and its people even as it succumbs to them. More than mere cautionary tale, this is a volume of hope and wonder.
A fatherless boy is conflicted by his Catholic upbringing and his dreams in this coming-of-age novel East Liberty is a poetic, passionate coming-of-age novel spanning 1955 to 1963, set in an Italian-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Roberto (Bobby) Renzo, the novel's fatherless narrator and main character, lives with Francene Renzo, his beautiful, mysterious, and unconventional mother who gave birth to him out of wedlock. Together the two habitually watch vintage Hollywood movies on TV. Orbiting Bobby and Francene are the Catholic Church; Francene's gothic, judgmental, Neapolitan parents; and the dramatically shifting culture at large hurtling toward them. While urged by the nuns at his school to pursue the priesthood — though his dream is to be a big-league baseball player — Bobby is drawn toward the temptations of the secular world, and finds himself involved in petty crimes and seduced by his awakening sexuality. As he emerges from his childhood cloud of innocence, his desire to know about his father becomes acute, and he is forced to confront the confusion and contradictions that rule his life. First published in hardcover in 2001, East Liberty won the Carolina Novel Award and was named a finalist for Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award in Literary Fiction. This paperback edition features a new foreword by Fred Gardaphé, a distinguished professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
In a weaving together of contradictory realms—past and present, rustbelt city and rural/urban South, old-world Catholicism and backwoods Protestantism—Joseph Bathanti draws readers into the 1970s as protagonist George Dolce faces major upheaval in The Life of the World to Come. George aspires to leave his blue collar, Catholic neighborhood of East Liberty in Pittsburgh. He is on the cusp of graduation from college and headed for law school when he becomes entangled in a local gambling ring. After his father gets laid off at the steel mill, George dramatically increases his wagering to help his parents with finances. What's more, he allows his boss at his real job and love interest's father, a pharmacist named Phil Rosechild, to place bets through him with the gambling ring's volatile kingpin. As his parents' financial situation deteriorates, George delves deeper into gambling, and he even goes so far as to set up Phil by using the pharmacist's unschooled and ever-growing betting practices to his own end—cheating the father of the woman he loves. When Phil welches on a large bet that George has placed for him, George finds himself in life-threatening trouble and must abandon his law school dreams. He robs the pharmacy, steals the delivery car, and flees south. After his stolen car breaks down in Queen, North Carolina, he meets a young, mysterious woman known as Crow. The two form a bond and eventually take to the road in an attempt to reconcile their harrowing, often surreal destiny and to escape George's inevitable punishment.
Joseph Bathanti, born and raised in Pittsburgh, teaches Creative Writing at Appalachian State University. Bathanti is the author of four books of poetry: Communion Partners, Anson County, The Feast of All Saints, and This Metal. His first novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council; The Samuel Talmadge Ragan Award, presented annually for outstanding contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina over an extended period; the Linda Flowers Prize; the Sherwood Anderson Award, and others.
Joseph Bathanti's volume of love/hate poems about growing up and contending with the physicality of Pittsburgh, that unforgettable city. The language is rich, metropolitan, and accomplished, resounding with the poet's deep memories of friendship, family, neighborhood, school agonies, old cars, Catholicism, games, fights, binges, discoveries, hard jobs, affections, memories of a place and time. The stories and lines are artfully constructed, building to the moving conclusion of the book, when the poet returns annually to visit his people and remember the city. He never stops saying goodbye." - Paul Zimmer.
In Anson County, Joseph Bathanti's generous heart turns the local into universal praises. Radiant as a welcome sun after rain, his reverence for people, places, and things fashions rare and extraordinary truths. Anson County is a substantive union of hymn and prayer." -Shelby Stephenson, author of Play My Music Anyhow
In his title poem, Joseph Bathanti writes that 'Even a mincing moon off cotton will yield/light enough to walk by.' There is something of pale moonlight in all these poems, by which I scarcely mean that they are vague. Rather, things as ordinary as field cotton are seen in a way so original as to seem magical. The author has his rhetorical reasons to call this masterful book Land of Amnesia, but in fact that author forgets nothing. .... The delicious, full-throated lyricism of this volume would alone be enough to recommend it. That it grapples so bravely and brilliantly with what I must feebly call Things That Matter makes it indispensable." - Sydney Lea, founder of The New England Review
In a weaving together of contradictory realms—past and present, rustbelt city and rural/urban South, old-world Catholicism and backwoods Protestantism—Joseph Bathanti draws readers into the 1970s as protagonist George Dolce faces major upheaval in The Life of the World to Come. George aspires to leave his blue collar, Catholic neighborhood of East Liberty in Pittsburgh. He is on the cusp of graduation from college and headed for law school when he becomes entangled in a local gambling ring. After his father gets laid off at the steel mill, George dramatically increases his wagering to help his parents with finances. What's more, he allows his boss at his real job and love interest's father, a pharmacist named Phil Rosechild, to place bets through him with the gambling ring's volatile kingpin. As his parents' financial situation deteriorates, George delves deeper into gambling, and he even goes so far as to set up Phil by using the pharmacist's unschooled and ever-growing betting practices to his own end—cheating the father of the woman he loves. When Phil welches on a large bet that George has placed for him, George finds himself in life-threatening trouble and must abandon his law school dreams. He robs the pharmacy, steals the delivery car, and flees south. After his stolen car breaks down in Queen, North Carolina, he meets a young, mysterious woman known as Crow. The two form a bond and eventually take to the road in an attempt to reconcile their harrowing, often surreal destiny and to escape George's inevitable punishment.
A fatherless boy is conflicted by his Catholic upbringing and his dreams in this coming-of-age novel East Liberty is a poetic, passionate coming-of-age novel spanning 1955 to 1963, set in an Italian-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Roberto (Bobby) Renzo, the novel's fatherless narrator and main character, lives with Francene Renzo, his beautiful, mysterious, and unconventional mother who gave birth to him out of wedlock. Together the two habitually watch vintage Hollywood movies on TV. Orbiting Bobby and Francene are the Catholic Church; Francene's gothic, judgmental, Neapolitan parents; and the dramatically shifting culture at large hurtling toward them. While urged by the nuns at his school to pursue the priesthood — though his dream is to be a big-league baseball player — Bobby is drawn toward the temptations of the secular world, and finds himself involved in petty crimes and seduced by his awakening sexuality. As he emerges from his childhood cloud of innocence, his desire to know about his father becomes acute, and he is forced to confront the confusion and contradictions that rule his life. First published in hardcover in 2001, East Liberty won the Carolina Novel Award and was named a finalist for Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award in Literary Fiction. This paperback edition features a new foreword by Fred Gardaphé, a distinguished professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Light at the Seam, a new collection from North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti, is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and its people even as it succumbs to them. More than mere cautionary tale, this is a volume of hope and wonder.
In The 13th Sunday after Pentecost, Joseph Bathanti offers poems that delve deep into a life reimagined through a mythologized past. Moving from his childhood to the present, weaving through the Italian immigrant streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to his parochial school, from the ballpark to church and home again, these contemplative poems present a situation unique to the poet but familiar to us all. As Bathanti recalls the joys, struggles, and confusion of his formative years in the late fifties and into the sixties, he gains a deeper understanding of the often surreal, always paradoxical world around him. He explores the perceived injustices of childhood, observes the mysteries of religious rituals, and examines the complex emotions families experience as children grow up and parents grow old. These poems divulge an eventful life, compelling us to reflect on our own as we confront a world of wonder and uncertainty. Across the strike zone swoops a dove, maybe an angel. You’re in Pittsburgh, March; it’s snowing. All week you’ve seen angels; everyone’s tired, proclaiming even horrid things angels, intimating miracles. Johnson’s pitch obliterates the bird— a hail of feathers and dander, as if inside a tiny bomb detonated. Like a cartoon. Thoroughly unbelievable. Around you, people are dying. But you ignore it. You laugh at the massacred dove. It’s not funny, but you laugh. You could cry, rip your hair out, your clothes off, crash through the seventhfloor window into the slushy black streets of the city. It’s funny because it’s not. —from “Angels”
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