Thomas Hubbard reviews Frank Rossini's "last confession"
last confession, by Frank Rossini
Poetry, ISBN 978-0-9839092-3-1
sight | for | sight books,
1395 Barber Drive
Eugene, OR 97405
2021, paperback, 120 pages, $18.00
You're sitting on the patio talking with your neighbor, a grandfatherly man . . . a friendly face. His words come to you as snapshots and movie clips. Afternoon passes into evening. You both turn toward home, dinner and other things. Later, perhaps it occurs to you . . . how fortunate to know such a person.
Frank Rossini’s latest poetry collection brings these words to mind. What you notice in the world around you may change after you read Rossini's Last Confession, a poetic overview of what has happened around him in four stages of his life. It will place you in a sequence of four separate realities, each one a distinctive representation of humanity’s joyous, painful beauty.
(Note: In these poems, Rossini includes no punctuation other than the use of multiple spaces to denote a pause.)
Rossini grew up in the boroughs of New York City. In Part I of this book we see him, son of an Italian family, navigating New York City’s neighborhoods during the 50s and 60s, becoming a young man. In the long poem “moving pianos,” (pg 16) which he dedicates to his Jewish Hungarian immigrant “stepgrandfather & founder of Leichtman Bros. Piano Movers,” he learns “the art of work”—
“ If I were still teaching literature and writing, it would claim a large space in my lesson plans.”
I was “the kid” the bosses’ nephew the boy
they sent to the bank with weekly receipts
my pockets bulged with cash checks & rolls
of coin as I walked the Spanish Harlem streets
before they became mean with junk past Israel's
bodega Ramos’ record store its tinny speaker
wired above the door blasting the beautiful
sounds of Tito Puente Celia Cruz the young
Willie Colon . . .
. . .I stopped at the hotdog cart & fell in love
with the Puerto Rican girls their eyes black
as the beads of my mother’s rosary their tongue
sweet as Latin . . .
. . .
at 12 I was the office help
adding long columns of numbers in the account books
till I became fast as my uncle calculating
the sums in a small place just above my heart . . .
. . . the next year I smoked three packs a day
& could hold my end of a Wurlitzer
I learned how to “dutch” a piano
onto the truck’s tailgate . . .
. . . I learned how to be
the weight I carried to move
like the masters I learned the art
of work.
Rossini continues, in this section, chronicling the lessons of boyhood with poems such as “learning to dance,” “learning to box,” and “sex ed.” Then, in “Brooklyn girls,” (pg 22) he recalls,
. . .
I went out with two Brooklyn girls one
a blind date on a boat
ride to Bear Mountain an Italian
friend of a friend's
girlfriend we liked
each other but lived
three trains apart the other
a Polish girl I met at a Sunday
afternoon teen dance in the ballroom
of a Catholic hospital
we kissed pressed
our clothed bodies into one
another for an hour in her darkened
doorway while her mother watched
TV inside
but it was two trains a bus ride & a long
painful walk home
in the cold . . .
The poem goes on to recount a trip to Coney Island with some friends “to meet girls who never showed up.”
. . . our money gone
on beer a cop caught me
last one jumping the subway turnstile
he gave me a ticket
a court appearance & a token
to get home
As with the end of childhood for many of us, this section ends with poems about the decline and death of grandparents, and visits to graveyards. In “genealogy the lost grandfather,” (pg 31) Rossini tells of his biological great grandfather who “. . . left Genoa & landed / alone / in Vermont / a marble cutter fleeing his own / civil war. . . .” There, he quarried and carved tombstones for dead Civil War soldiers. After two, years his wife and daughter came. He moved with family to Italian Harlem and started a fruit and vegetable business, later marrying a Hungarian woman and still later a Spanish woman. The poem continues,
. . .
years later my father brought
a priest to bless his father's death
persuaded the priest to sign
a paper to open the ground
in the Catholic cemetery to this divorced
wayward son bring him home
to rest with his family . . .
In “a prayer for my Jewish grandfather,” (pg 33) we read about the funeral of a Hungarian immigrant who left his wife for Rossini’s grandmother and her three sons. He is pictured in his open coffin with a rosary tied to his fingers.
. . .
& in this moment of sorrow I stare
at his dark forehead it reminds me
of the table where Friday nights the family
gathered its wood rubbed deep
with whiskey & smoke & his long
journey from Hungary to this grim
room of flowers . . .
Part II finds Rossini as an adult, revisiting random memories of his mother, of his friend Tom Intondi, and of characters in his New York City past. These poems carry the flavors of nostalgia. In the poem “memory,” (pg 43) we see his mother, aged and diminished:
. . .
my mother sits in the common room
with a basket of family pictures in her lap a nest
of exiled memories her mind
a broken shell
we hand her our newest
born & her flesh remembers
how to rock
to ease
a child
Rossini closes this section with a poem to his deceased friend Tom, “road trip a found photo.” (pg 54) He begins the poem, “you never had much luck / with cars.” He proceeds to recount several comedic misadventures with cars, ending with “. . . your Falcon’s / smoking grille / grinning.”
Part III begins with Rossini already moved to the green hills and valleys of Oregon with his wife and child. In “the list,” (pg 59) his contemplation of a list of pre-winter chores is interrupted when “. . . an angle of geese honks / & pulls me outside / a squirrel busily plants / acorns. . . .” Poems of children, adoptions, morning walks in southern Willamette Valley, and the passing of seasons follow before focus shifts to mowing, weeding and caring for the earth.
In Part IV, Rossini recounts a visit back to his old neighborhoods in New York City. He observes the changes gentrification has wrought in place of his memories. It seems worthy of note that his poem “the day John Coltrane died” brackets this book, appearing in Part I, and continued toward the end of Part IV. It’s a poem that draws attention to the history of atrocities Black Americans have suffered at the hands of racists. [The poem is published in Raven’s anthology; Take a Stand, Art Against Hate (Raven Chronicles Press, 2020).]
The penultimate poem in this book, "coffee,” (pg 106) reaffirms Rossini’s break from the Catholic Church, stated in the book’s title poem, “last confession.” After describing a visit with his mother during which she told him she “. . . had talked to a young parish priest / he assured her I would come back / to the Holy Mother the Church I was silent . . .” he writes. He continues,
I never went back to that mother the Church
I moved & found faith in the small piece of land
the songlines of its trees
stones plants soil its birds fluttering
back & forth between tangles of rosemary
& hanging seed feeders the deer grazing
on fallen crab apples
the squirrels burying acorns
in winter’s tired gardens . . .
Here is a book of poetry you might gift to almost anybody, or keep it for yourself to read and reread. If I were still teaching literature and writing, it would claim a large space in my lesson plans. To my thinking, Rossini is a master poet and this book is a masterpiece.
Thomas Hubbard , a retired writing instructor and spoken word performer, wrote features for various newspapers and magazines during the 1980s, then authored Nail and other hardworking poems, Year of the Dragon Press, 1994; Junkyard Dogz (also available on audio CD); and Injunz, a chapbook; also Poems for my people (Foothills Publishing, 2011). He designed and published Children Remember Their Fathers (an anthology), and books by seven other authors. His book reviews have appeared in Square Lake, Raven Chronicles, New Pages and The Cartier Street Review. Publication credits include poems in Yellow Medicine Review (spring 2010), I Was Indian, ed. Susan Deer Cloud (Foothills Publishing, 2010), and Florida Review; and short stories in Red Ink andYellow Medicine Review.