'The good flame': How poor immigrant boy from Sicily found poetic power in Monmouth

LONG BRANCH - Monmouth County's new poet laureate, Emanuel di Pasquale, remembers the day and time he stepped off the boat and saw America for the first time. It was 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 2, 1956.

He was 13 and had just left behind a beautiful homeland on the island of Sicily, but also a life of poverty. His father died when he was an infant and his mother was raising him, his two sisters and brother. She pulled him from school when he was 11 so that he could sell bread in order for his family to have enough lire — Italian money — to buy food.

"In those days, if you were born poor, you died poor," he said.

But it was as a boy walking up and down the stony, limestone hills of Ragusa, Sicily, with its rich baroque architecture, that words first started to come together in di Pasquale's mind in the form of poems. By third grade he was already introduced to the greats like Virgil, Dante and Homer.

The world might never had heard his words though, had not an elderly, widowed distant cousin returned from New York looking for a caregiver wife. His mom took him up on the offer and the family boarded the passenger liner Vulcania and moved to Tarrytown, New York. Di Pasquale said his mom had a dream that if they moved to America, he would do well.

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"Emanuel has a remarkable story of immigrating to the United States in 1956 and developing his passion for the arts and literature," said Monmouth County Commissioner Ross F. Licitra, who recommended di Pasquale, or "Manny" as his friends call him, for the poet laureate post, an unpaid, voluntary position. "Emanuel even taught as a professor of English for more than 54 years and has published numerous books and poems including 'Genesis', 'The Silver Lake Poems,' 'Escape the Night' and 'Cartwheels to the Moon.'”

When he came to America, he spoke almost no English. But he read all the time, with science fiction being one of his favorite genres. He listened to the radio to learn idiom and accents. He sang along to Frank Sinatra.

He wrote his first poems for the Sleepy Hollow High School paper. From there it was onto Adelphi University and then New York University for graduate school, which he completed in the mid-1960s. Di Pasquale then started his career teaching prose at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, an historically Black college. But he said the South was still too racist, "so we left." He moved north with his first wife and two children at the time and took a job as an assistant professor teaching at Middlesex Community College.

He remained there until three years ago, when the COVID pandemic ushered in virtual teaching. He did many things in his life, but he wasn't teaching on Zoom. He liked to be in the classroom with the students. So he thought it the right time to retire.

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At 80 years old, di Pasquale will have the honor of composing poems for the county's special occasions, like dedications and memorials. Di Pasquale, who fulfills the same role for Long Branch, quipped that just because he has the honorary distinction, doesn't mean he'll be "walking around with a laurel branch around my head."

It was a reference to the habit of ancient Greek poets wearing an evergreen wreath. The tradition was revived in Italy during the Renaissance when the custom of appointing a poet to compose poems for special occasions started.

The job hasn't changed much since then. When Long Branch built back the boardwalk after Superstorm Sandy ripped it up, for example, di Pasquale spoke at the dedication and remarked that the board's lampposts "begin to rise like warriors, bringing the good flame."

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He'll also get the chance to promote artistic and literary expression within the community, something he already does every July 4th as the host of the Pier Village Poetry Festival. He's hoping the governor will get wind of it and reinstate the poet laureate post for New Jersey.

He is also the first county poet laureate since Anna M. McNeill, who served from 1995 until her death three years later. 'We hoped that the honorary position would encourage the next generation of poets to continue writing and sharing their art," said Licitra of the county commissioners.

He's not the first poet laureate from the historically rich city of Long Branch. From 1997 to 2000, Robert Pinsky, the grandson of a Long Branch bootlegger, was the U.S. poet laureate.

"Poetry is like using words as a musical instrument to connect us to nature and our own passions," di Pasquale said. "It makes us softer, gentler people. It's like looking at a painting. It fills us."

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Di Pasquale's modest oceanfront condo, where he lives alone, is adorned with porcelain statues, fedora hats, walking sticks and artwork. Some famous, like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Others, much less known, like the Christmas tree done by his daughter years ago. He married three times in his life and had three children, and eight grandchildren from ages six months to 23 years old.

Today he keeps himself busy doing what he did as a boy in Sicily. He walks. He wakes up early every morning and walks a fast mile or two on the Long Branch boardwalk, which he has a clear view of from his fourth-floor condo. Then he usually meets friends for lunch at Rockafellers Pizza on Prospect Street. He's also an avid fan of soccer and wears an Adidas's jacket and a bandana around his head, perhaps as a substitution for a laurel.

And the words, they still come to him. He'll be ready "for when the commissioners call for a poem."

When Jersey Shore native Dan Radel is not reporting the news, you can find him in a college classroom where he is a history professor. Reach him @danielradelapp; 732-643-4072; dradel@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Meet Monmouth County poet laureate Emanuel di Pasquale