by Dianalee Velie

While Dianalee Velie was teaching poetry in Italy, she composed these poems to reflect her love of the country and for her cousins in Santa Croce di Camerina, Sicily. Italian Lesson celebrates the sights and sounds of Italy—explorations of the local food & drink, sightseeing expeditions, and the lively spirit of the Italian people as they welcomed and shared their way of life. Come along on her Italian journey and you too will fall in love.

Inside the book, readers will also enjoy photos from the journey, taken by the author’s husband, Robert J. Popp. Here are just a few samples:

About the Author

Dianalee Velie is the Poet Laureate of Newbury, New Hampshire where she lives and writes.  She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has a Master of Arts in Writing from Manhattanville College, where she has served as faculty advisor of Inkwell: A Literary Magazine. She has taught poetry, memoir, and short story at universities and colleges in New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire and in private workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have been published in hundreds of literary journals and many have been translated into Italian.

In the past, she enjoyed traveling to rural school systems in Vermont and New Hampshire teaching poetry for the Children’s Literacy Foundation. Her play, Mama Says, was directed by Daniel Quinn in a staged reading in New York City. She is the author of five books of poetry, Glass House, First Edition, The Many Roads to Paradise, The Alchemy of Desire, Ever After and a collection of short stories, Soul Proprietorship: Women in Search of Their Souls. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, the New England Poetry Club, the International Woman Writers Guild, the New Hampshire Poetry Society and founder of the John Hay Poetry Society.

Early Praise for Italian Lesson:

In her newest book, Dianalee Velie provides the reader with a vacation in Italy— the best kind of vacation, stunning beauty enjoyed in the company of the people one loves. Page by page, we are served her sheer pleasure of being alive. We travel with her to northern Italy, Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, and Sicily; along the way, we vicariously sip espresso and grappa, drink wine, or taste olive oil, all served in an impressive array of poetic forms (terza rima, ottava rima, terzanelle, rondeau). In a particularly playful exploration of traditional form, Velie describes a Lipizzaner stallion named Petrarch inside a Petrarchan sonnet. Along the way, we share with humor the inevitable snafus of being a tourist, such as her near disaster with a saint’s relics. Throughout Italian Lesson, imagery transcends the gastronomic to the historic and sacred. In one poem, the spear points of marching Roman soldiers transmogrify into olive tree leaves; in “Wizened,” we encounter a persona poem from an olive’s point of view. In “Blessings of the Birds,” a “flock of common redpoll finches/ their tiny heads capped in scarlet” land on her patio and become “like the cardinals descending upon Rome.” This poet is singing to the rafters about the glory of life.

—Alexandria Peary, New Hampshire State Poet Laureate

I have never been to Italy, and now I have. These poems have given me this country through lovers’ heightened senses: a wild and synesthetic journey.

—Marie Harris, New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Emerita

Dianalee Velie is a poet of exceptional vision and creativity.  In Italian Lesson, like a master crafter of Vino Nobile, she picks her poetic grapes, her words, with care and insight, and creates sensual, evocative and multilayer images filled with love and nostalgia not just for Italy, but humanity, nature, earth, in poems that must be savored verse by verse. Che vino perfetto! Cin cin!

—Ala Khaki, poet, author of Return

Everyone who has visited or dreamed about Italy will delight in the wide-ranging images and experiences captured in Dianalee’s poetry. Her words make me eager to return to Il Bel Pease.

—Ken Tentarelli, award-winning historical fiction author

ENJOY A VIDEO OF DIANALEE READING FROM THE BOOK:

Dianalee Velie — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (May2021)

The post Italian Lesson appeared first on The Poetry Box.

by Dr. Paul T.M. Jackson

Impressions is a small collection of traditional formal poetry by Dr. Paul T.M. Jackson, inspired by quiet moments and observations—whether they occurred while cycling through Provence, rambling in Wales, trekking through Galicia, hunting for castles in Corsica, or even on a pirogue in the Amazon. Jackson enjoys sharing these moments with his readers, and hopes these carefully crafted poems helps them find their own ‘poetic eye.’

About the Author

Dr. Paul T.M. Jackson is a graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classics, a master’s degree in teaching and learning, and a PhD in ancient philosophy that he passed with no corrections under examination by A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge Tim Whitmarsh and the Open University’s Dr. Carolyn Price.

He is a qualified teacher of religious education and has several years experience as a head of classics in the United Kingdom and as a teacher of  literature in France. He also has several academic publications, including “The Gods of Philodemus” in the Rosetta Journal and “The Polytheism of the Epicureans” in Walking the Worlds, and has reviewed Marchand & Verde’s Épicurisme et Scepticisme for Cambridge University Press and Ovid’s Heriodes for OCR / Bloomsbury Academic UK. He is associated with numerous professional societies and institutions and has enjoyed research stays, such as at the Fondation Hardt in Geneva.

His travel diary,  A Greek Odyssey, was published in 2018 through Wanderlust, and his translation of Alexandre Dumas’ sprawling epic Isaac Laquedem will be later on in the year. His translations of French poetry have also recently appeared in Better than Starbucks.

You can connect with Paul via social media:

Facebook: facebook.com/paultmjackson
Twitter: @paultmjackson
Instagram: @pj311078
Website: paultmjackson.com

What They’re Saying…

Paul takes us on an enriching and satisfying excursion through the European countryside—without us having to leave the couch. Brilliant.

~ Holly Hill Mangin
author of Limitless

Book Launch Celebration

June 2, 2018, CLICK HERE for details and more photos.

The post Impressions appeared first on The Poetry Box.