The Bronx Unbound: VIA Folios, cartea 162

The poet, Angelo Zeolla, was born in the Pelham Bay section of The Bronx, a borough of the City of New York, in 1979. He has a B.A. in Italian Studies and Philosophy from CUNY Queens College and an M.A. from Middlebury College, in 20th Century Italian Literature.His poetry reflects his background as the child of Italian immigrants, as well as it is informed by his having had to navigate through two different worlds-that of his Italian origins, with that of, the neighborhood of his birth, in The Bronx: The former being italofone, provincial, as well connected to the earth in a Silonian sense, and the latter being anglofone, hyphenated, in flux and ambivalent to the old world, yet aggressively protective of any encroachment to an Italian American identity from any perceived threat. His poems are a byproduct of trying to make sense of all this, and ultimately a realization of the solidarity that the poet uncovers in capturing the essence of humanity's daily-multilayered existence.