Bursting Light into Dark

Poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco continues a powerful exploration

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco is exploring with words that ultimately are inspiring.
Mansfield Press has recently released his new book of poetry The Dark Time of Angels. He presents us with 40 poems that explore a detail where Di Cicco digs deep into fear and comes out with hope in unexpected places.
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco was born in Arezzo, Italy, located in the southeast region of Tuscany, and had a Canadian and American upbringing. His family emigrated to Montreal, moved to Toronto in 1956, and then to Baltimore in 1958. It was at the age of 17 that Di Cicco decided to become a poet and this was his moving force for 20 years.
In the 1970s his proliferation grew both in publishing 10 books within 10 years and had work in magazines worldwide. Other books include The Tough Romance, Dolce-Amaro, Women we never See Again and Living in Paradise - New and Selected Poems. He's also participated in many lectures and readings. Some lucky audience was able to experience his reading at "Scream in High Park" in 2001. However, he decided to follow a different path by the mid-'80s, and is now ordained as Father George in a parish north of Toronto. During the process of his vocation he stopped writing altogether. And it wasn't until the end of the century that he returned to the written word.
Opening the cover of A Dark Time of Angels, one may think that it contains old archaic prose wrought with religious iconography. But by simply flipping through the first pages of this book the rhythm travels from "nudge me like a blind man nudged" to "the angel of madness I am" and later continues with "and shivering, excited by no less illusion / than what I entered with". These are little excerpts; just glimpses into the writing that stems from moments of suffering, ideas of death, dying, growing older and that which plagues the world. However, they are just not melancholic renditions, they each give breadth, and are as draining as they are filling.
Dennis Lee says it best in his afterword for Di Cicco's Living in Paradise. "At its best it can amaze you, seduce you, exasperate you like nobody else's. It's one of a kind."
"Pow! .... The moon!," by Jackie Gleason is quoted by Di Cicco in "From 'Fairy Tales for Latins'", which is exactly what the writer gives us through every lyrical note.

Publication Date: 2004-01-18
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3535