Customer Reviews

Amore on Hope St.

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"I don't know if there's really a Hope Street or not, but Maria Lisella gives me hope - because her book is so full of amore, of all sorts, including the love of language, and the humor like twists of lime."

Alicia Ostriker, award-winning poet and recent recipient of the National Jewish Book Award's top prize for THE BOOK OF SEVENTY.

Maria Lisella is a true artist with words, weaving together scenes in her poems that are rich with emotion, elegantly told, and cutting to the core of the human experience. In this collection she wonderfully brings to life the experiences of immigrants in New York, and also, in one of my favorites, (Fog In Venice), she captures every sensual moment of a winter swim in this magical Italian place. Reading Amore on Hope St. is a beautiful, truthful, ride through a woman's psyche. -- Susan Van Allen, author of 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go

In the first section of her collection of poems, Amore on Hope St., Maria Lisella
powerfully renders the tension between first and second generation Americans:
"My friends don't sing anymore/First they forgot the words and then the melodies".
Tension between young and old is skillfully caught by her imagery in the second section:
"Sometimes I lose your fragrance/but remember the crease in your starched white sleeve".
In the final section, the drama of lovers is beautifully staged: "I imagine Apollo rushing Daphne/
who will never be caught/in her desire to stay pure and free." It is her keen use of details to embody
strongly felt ideas that I admire very much in Maria Lisella's poems.

Sanford Fraser

"Maria Lisella draws poetic vignettes that reach far beyond the second generation of Americans in New York City. 'I am from gnarled hands that sew and tailor, iron and wash, cook and make all the places where I come from,' she writes. We soon learn, in reading the captivating stories in her poems, and in being immersed both in the sensory perception and lyrical association found there, that those places are mirrors of humanity as a whole, with deeply touching feelings caught within memory and longing."

--Diana Festa, author of The Gathering,Poetry Matrix


"Maria Lisella is a travel writer and poet, and an extraordinary generous companion to the right word, the exact sonic stroke. Geographically, her range is admirable: from the lacy edges of the Adriatic to sultry Havana, from Venice, a temple of steam, to kielbasa and pirogies, and vodka and beer. In her crafted narratives, one can hear staccato Calabrese vowels clanging against brick walls in a Queens alleyway and abrupt Mandarin on the subway. With this collection, Lisella stakes her claim to becoming known as a soulful gifted poet."

--Angelo Verga, author of six collections of poetry, and curator of poetry and spoken word at The Cornelia Street Café