Fist of Sun

by Ferruccio Brugnaro, Jack Hirschman

Ferruccio Brugnaro was born in Mestre, Italy in 1936. He worked for more than 30 years—most of his adult life—in the giant complex of chemical factories in the Porto Marghera district of Venice. By turns tender, loving, angry, satiric, these are passionate poems that grab you by the collar by Italy's best-known working-class poet—skillfully crafted, clear, and filled with powerful images.

120 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of poems by a blue-collar, 30-year veteran of northern Italy's chemical slag factories sounds intriguing, no? Sadly, the poems aren't that good. A nice socialist tone underlines most of them, which is okay, but they're very literal and not terribly creative. Most of them focus on beating up the boss, the way that the petrochemical haze filters the sunlight, lung diseases, etc. There are a few notable exceptions: "I Was Surprised the Other Day" has as its subject, one of the author's co-workers, a noble and kind man, pure of spirit. But at the end the author, astonished, finds him building rat-traps:
"but we're gonna get 'em all
you'll see, you'll see
we're gonna get 'em
all
all."
which has a nice, grim resonance to it, especially what with all the talk of banking the factory foreman in other poems.
Decent, but not what you'd expect. Or maybe it is.