Years of Pilgrimage / Tom D'Egidio
Years of Pilgrimage is a metaphorical journey through a life full of places and people, since Tom D'Egidio was rescued from the Old St. Vincent's Orphanage in Philadelphia where he was abandoned by his mother and later he successfully managed to live in San Francisco, Quito, Rome and New York. An Italian-American descendant from an Abruzzese family, D'Egidio delves with his poems in a coming-of-age story as a writer. In his own words: "I wound up being primed to be a writer, but a writer too damaged to write". D'Egidio sticks to an Ars Poetica of his own that he develops through the book, accompanying his lines with abundant references to Dante, Pound, and also to his personal encounters with such characters as Basquiat and the poets from the Beat Generation.
COFFINS
The patron Saint lay in his glass-sided coffin
A detailed replica in miniature
On the little boy’s bedside table
A souvenir from the family’s hometown in Italy
Where old people spoke
Matter-of-factly about
Having seen the Saint flying
Through our snowy mountains.
The boy’s grandfather lay in his coffin
At the West Philadelphia funeral parlor
Where an elderly woman made
His grandmother the compliment that
“He looks better now than when he was alive.”
In the funeral parlor kitchen the little boy
Drank very cold milk and ate a delicious banana
That would soon become extinct.
A few days later the boy bought his first pen
Which came in a somber oblong box
Lined with white satin.
Years of Pilgrimage is the 34th book in the Bridges bilingual English-Spanish poetry series by Darklight. It has interior photographs of Tom D'Egidio taken in Ecuador by the renowned Canadian photojournalist Neal Panton, and beautiful drawings for the cover and interiors made by the American artist Bob Givens.
