[ back ]
DiSavino helps to celebrate William Carlos Williams
(by Lisa Kintish - April 23, 2008)
As a girl, Doris DiSavino was published in “Scholastic Magazine.” Decades later, her writing is again in print as she is finding success as a poet.
The Towaco resident has poems in two forthcoming anthologies - “On the Quiet Side” and “The Poetry of Place: North Jersey in Poetry, an Anthology Celebrating the Poetry of William Carlos Williams.” For the latter, there will also be a reading in Paterson on May 10, of which DiSavino said she is “apprehensive about playing with the big kids. At the age of 81, it is somewhat intimidating to be the new kid on the block.”
The concern is not necessary, as DiSavino has received many accolades of late. Last year she won the New Jersey Poetry Society’s Julia M. Sudol Award for a poem called, “Old Men in Supermarkets.” This year, she won the Betsy Barlow Award for the poem, “Billy Collins.” There have also been citations from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
DiSavino wrote an extensive amount of poetry as a student and young woman, but put it aside when she got married. She and her husband Paul were owner-operators of several businesses including distributors of professional audio recording equipment in Paterson. Her poem in the William Carlos Williams anthology, “November: Grand Street, Paterson,” is from a collection in progress, “Gritty City,” which is based on those years.
After retiring, DiSavino joined a program called “Discovering the Writer Within,” which was sponsored by the New Vitality department of Chilton Memorial Hospital. She is now part of the group called “Alumni Writers,” also sponsored by Chilton. “It is the acceptance of my work by those groups that has prompted me to begin to submit material for publication.”
Motivated by “emotion, observation, and absurdities,” the subject matters of her poems are “emotion, observation, humor.”
Said DiSavino, “I rewrite more than I write, so my output is small. I have been known to agonize over whether to use ‘a’ or ‘the.’ It does make a difference, you know.”
When she does write a poem, the inspiration comes from all around. “For the last 50 years we have lived atop a hill with small groves of trees on two sides. It is surprising how many wild creatures survive in them, and I have begun writing about them - a wild turkey doing his mating dance, a red fox sleeping in the sun, a tireless woodpecker, a wild one-eyed white cat, the red smear of cardinals against the snow, a flash of blue (jay) past my kitchen window.”
She has also written what she said is “either a lament or a love letter to a barn that burned several years ago and is in a way an elegy for the small farms that once thrived in this community.”
Born and raised in New Jersey, DiSavino nee Terhune, hails from Midland Park and is a descendant of the Reverend Comfort Starr and Albertus Terhune. She is also a distant cousin of the late writer Albert Payson Terhune. Despite all the proud Garden State heritage, her writing is not limited to her location. There are many other things that prompt a poem, in fact it is the subject of one: “Birthing a Poem.”
Birthing a Poem
is like birthing a child.
Some come easy,
Some come hard;
Some breathe by themselves,
Some have to be smacked into life.
Given my druthers,
I prefer the come-easy kind.
As to the poets DiSavino admires, she said, “I read recently that there are 100,000 poets in the United States so how to choose one or two? Although we read mostly male poets in school, of recent years I’ve found myself responding more to women poets: Emily Dickenson, for her ability to condense the universe into a teacup, Ruth Stone both for her talent and her courage, Maria Mazziotti Gillan whose honesty and self-revelatory poems encourage me, Anna Swir for affirming that passions do not die with age, Marge Piercy for making me laugh and cry, Lynn Lifshin, Carolyn Kizer, Virginia Hamilton Adair, June Jordan, so many others and all those unheralded poets in all those blogs and e-zines. I am awed and astounded at the wealth of talent they display.”
Then, of course there is William Carlos Williams. Of whom, DiSavino said, “What is there about the poetry of William Carlos Williams that is not inspiring?”
DiSavino will participate in the poetry reading celebrating the publication of “The Poetry of Place: North Jersey in Poetry, an Anthology Celebrating the Poetry of William Carlos Williams” at the Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church Street, Paterson, on May 10. For more information, call 973-684-6555 or visit www.pccc.edu/poetry.
Lisa Kintish can be contacted at kintish@northjersey.com.
[ back ]
