"Finding the Edge appeals with a wry, powerful combination of narrative and lyrical poems. The narratives are small novels, chiseled studies of human folly and vulnerability: You won't soon forget the reckless, highway-obsessed Wally or the hapless woman in "Copperhead." In his lyrical mode, Ortolani is beautifully expansive ("In the surrounding air, /the night spreads from my fingertips..."). Cinematic images abound to present a wondrous but never-sentimentalized world of nature. After reading Ortolani, you'll not look at coyotes, back roads, or your lover's face in the old, expected ways...
"Finding the Edge appeals with a wry, powerful combination of narrative and lyrical poems. The narratives are small novels, chiseled studies of human ...
Al Ortolani's poems in PAPER BIRDS DON'T FLY are a mix of small town memories and present day realities. They share both humor and sorrow, longing and contentment, often in the irony of a single experience. Many are set in Southeastern Kansas, a geographical region rich in the texture of its free-thinking people. The poems pinch the mundane arm. They bleed with the colors of everyday experience. PAPER BIRDS DON'T FLY is as accessible to the reader as wind blowing autumn leaves or hedge trees intertwined with barbed wire, demarcating a bean field.
Al Ortolani's poems in PAPER BIRDS DON'T FLY are a mix of small town memories and present day realities. They share both humor and sorrow, longing and...
In the 1920s and 1930s, Pittsburg, KS was a major coal-mining town, attracting various ethnic groups from southeast Europe and beyond. The often belligerent and divisive spirit of the miners--and the unpredictable politics of Southeast Kansas--earned the region the nickname, "The Little Balkans." The four poets (Al Ortolani, Melissa Fite Johnson, Adam Jameson, JT Knoll) appearing in this collection carry forward that same proud, independent spirit. They call themselves White Buffalo, after a now-defunct café in Pittsburg that offered writers, poets, artists, musicians, and friends a...
In the 1920s and 1930s, Pittsburg, KS was a major coal-mining town, attracting various ethnic groups from southeast Europe and beyond. The often be...
