Wonderful Disaster

This book blooms. The poet takes us on a walk through time, from the old neighborhood with its palimpsest of paese, to the mature juicy voice of the lover poet who plays piano nocturnes and faces the night penning love poems with “the pleasant flutter of an eager heart.” Cappello grew up coming home through the doorway of her father’s shoemaker shop where there were “cactus filled windows”—never curtains—as “he needed sun to sew his leather by.” These poems in turn give the reader a sun filled window with which to do the work of life. And a choir of voices through which this collection of poetry blooms. Her grandmother who sang a song “about how wine is necessary for health.” Her mother who “couldn’t sleep at night,” so “every nighttime sound she heard.” Her father who left behind “a thousand blank pages” and faced “towards Italy as he played” mandolin. Her sister Frances who “Wringing her hands / she wants to talk / but keeps the words / trapped in her fingers...” All the breaking and keeping silence, silences vowed, silences enforced. “Voices spoke hungrily” Cappello reports. We can take our instruction how to read this collection directly from the poet herself: “...I rest my head on your / chest, hear your heartbeat, revel in that sacred sound...”

—Annie Lanzillotto