Franco D’Alessandro

I have enjoyed working with a diverse group of writers.  I have discovered new talent, and have published well-established writers.  I have also worked with well-known writers, actors and artists who cross into multiple genres.  This month we are publishing the new poetry book SUPPLICATIONS by the playwright and poet Franco D’Alessandro.

Here is a poem from SUPPLICATIONS

ROMA 

(for Maria Morreale)

It is hard, sometimes, to see you

Squinting eyes, walking the Forum,

combing the piazzas, looking up—

Passing the bright, blue days…

The gurgling fountains, your steady breath—

remind me of the ancient times

I try to recapture in a gaze… 

I want to see you again, the way you were,

without the buzz of electricity…the great beauty you were once—

You glow better by gaslight or a lantern’s flame. 

These unforgiving days, show the lines

and ravages of modernity,

that bring you such undeserved shame. 

The chariots have been replaced with Vespas

and the fiats that once fell from Cesar's mouth,

today, hum along your serpentine streets, blocking your veins.

I wander through you—feeling the pulse that has pumped—

All these centuries,

hypnotized by your beat,

contemplating your strange changes which estrange us.

But your vias and viales are somehow still the same,

still holding your secrets filled with joy

and pride and pain. 

What People Are Saying About SUPPLICATIONS:

D'Alessandro's poems possess what I value most—an emotional honesty and a keen wit.

Olympia Dukakis (actress)

In the immediacy of its expression, D’Alessandro’s poetry articulates both the palpable urgency to live and the pensive potency to reflect on the past and on what has been…(He) seeks a correspondence, similar to that of French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire, between the earthly realm of human experiences to the interpretive realms of language.

Pamela J. Rader (professor) 

It is as though D’Alessandro has invested millions in life and squeezes every penny returned. The poet sits in the middle of his poem (as he does in his plays) speaking loudly about persons who matter. It is healthy to be exposed to such passion!

Gregory Abels (director) 

D'Alessandro’s poetry inhabits that precious middle distance between the spiritual and corporeal. While being present and nostalgic at once, he reminds us that we are all fastened to this earth, to each other, and to our collective condition.

Josh Joplin (singer-songwriter) 

Franco D’Alessandro’s poems are a rich well for any person (artist or not) to draw from.  These are deeply moving poems filled with wonderfully exciting language.  He is an important poet and playwright for our generation.

Suzanne Corso (author) 

Franco D’Alessandro is a 2001 & 2002 Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist, a 1998 & 2000 Edward F. Albee Foundation Residency recipient and 2000-2001 Cherry Lane Theatre Alternative Finalist and 2001 Princess Grace Award Nominee.  A 2000-2001 NEA/TCG Playwrights Nominee, a 1999 & 2000 Dorset Theater Colony Residency recipient and 2005 New Frontiers Playwright.  Mr. D’Alessandro is a Member of The Dramatists Guild of America (1996) and The Cherry Lane Playwrights Alternative.  His 2002 Off-Broadway hit “Roman Nights” explores the artist/muse paradigm, vis-a-vis the tumultuous and dramatic life of stage and screen legend Anna Magnani and her inspirational friendship with the great playwright, Tennessee Williams.  This play was a critical and commercial success in New York and in London in 2004. It opened in Prague in 2006 where it has been sold-out for over three years.  The play will go on to be produced in Rome, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Moscow in 2009-11 and will soon be made into a feature film.  Franco is the author of several other plays: “The Shattering”; Maximum Happiness, featuring two new inter-connecting two-act plays, "Venice, Again" and "One Hundred Dollars Worth of Change"; The Museum Hours, three one-act plays which examine the healing and transcendent powers of art.  A new work entitled “White Elephants” is inspired by the work of Ernest Hemingway.  By 2009 D'Alessandro's plays will have been translated into five languages and performed in six countries. 

Franco D' Alessandro will be on Blog Talk Radio this Wednesday, August 5, at 8am PST (11am EST) hosted by Rafael Alvarado : www.blogtalkradio.com/onword/

Franco D' Alessandro will be on Behind the Scenes with Lucia Grillo radio/webcast on Wed. September 16th at 8pm Behind the Scenes with Lucia Grillo streaming live Wednesdays at 8:00 pm (EST) on http://www.dolcechannel.com/pages/liveradio.php

To order  SUPPLICATIONS by Franco D’Alessandro please go to http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htmand scroll to the D section.