Stone Walls

Poetry. "STONE WALLS administers a dose of Americana with a twist. Gil Fagiani's fifties childhood is recalled with the treats and temptations of post-war prosperity and adolescence rendered in high relief. Beneath the bucolic surface of suburban Connecticut the seeds of a rebellion that will explode a decade later are germinating. These poems are filled with the restlessness of the first generation born after the bomb and portray the initial, impulsive steps toward revolutionary sentiments."--Stephen Siciliano "Although we get glimpses into the perspective of the older poet in Gil Fagiani's latest book, STONE WALLS, it is the boy and adolescent poet that grabs us, as he zeroes in on the odd, the paradoxical, the grotesque, the irrevocably defamiliarized familiar. This evocative collection gives us front-row seats, and we feel the heat of the bodies on this stage of Italian American life captured with documentary precision and bitter tenderness."--Edvige Giunta "STONE WALLS is a closely observed saga of violence and remembrance while growing up. When the violence isn't writ large, it hovers above the words like a helicopter about to dump a body. 'Kiddie Rides' is not about carousel horses, but 'bloody hands behind the shower curtains,' and 'Class Struggle in the Connecticut Countryside' is about a violent rumble in the supposedly peaceful suburbs. Fagiani battles heroin too, and though he ultimately wins this one (this book is proof), the fallout causes the reader to share his father's sadness at what's happening to his son."--Ron Kolm