Ricordando Vincenzo Ancona
(February 23, 2010)
Poet, visual artist, raconteur, singer, immigrant laborer, friend.
We collaborated in the documentation and presentation of his Sicilian-language poetry and his wire tableaux in a published article, a book, and several exhibitions. The links below lead to various representations of his work. (His self-professed masterpiece, “St. George and the Dragon” is now in the permanent collection of the Fenimore Art Museum [4], Cooperstown, New York.) He helped my fledgling career more than I impacted his life.
That he shared parts of his life and his artistry with me is a gift I will always treasure. I visited him frequently in the basement kitchen of his Gravesend, Brooklyn home. I knew his late wife, Virginia, his children, his grandchildren, and even his great-grand children. My wife and I stayed with him in Castellammare del Golfo (Trapani province) during our 1985 trip and he showed us Scopello where he set off for the tonnara, or tuna fishing. I still have the olive branch basket he wove during our stay in Sicily.
[5]
Joseph Sciorra, Anna Lomax Wood, Maria Portuese, Vincenzo Ancona, Zulma Ortiz-Fuentes,
Castel del Golfo Social Club, Brooklyn, 1987.
Related Links
- New York Times obituary [9]
- New York Times article, 1991 [10]
- New York Times article, 1995 [11]
- Fred Gardaphé article [12]
- Kenneth Scambray article [13]
- New York Folklore Society article, 1991 [14]
- Audio file of Ancona reciting [15]
- Audio file of Ancona reciting [16]
- Wikipedia article in Sicilian [17]
- Ancona singing a Sicilian work song [18]
TAGS
Brooklyn [19] Castellammare del Golfo [20] folk music [21] folklore [22] poetry [23] sicilian [24] Sicilian culture [25] Sicilian poetry [26] sicily [27] Trapani [28] verse [29] Vincenzo Ancona [30]