| 
         
Carmine Dandrea 
Once In Korea: 
an Odyssey 
 
Carmine Dandrea 
Carmine's previous FootHills books:  
 
 
Once In Korea: an Odyssey, is first of all, as its subtitle suggests, a perilous journey or adventure characterized by many shifts in fortune. More specifically, it is concerned with Marine Corps combat culture and its consequences during the Korean War in 1951.  Internally it is divided into three parts or phases:  combat action; physical, mental and emotional consequences in the Epilog; and lasting irredeemable consequences in the end piece, Casualties. 
 
Once In Korea  is a series of poetic sequences drawing on all the other literary genres-fiction, memoir, autobiography and history --as poetry many times does. The sequences also use many different poetic forms from narrative to free verse to more traditional forms, including the lyric.  The individual poems of the sequences depend greatly on the use of irony, metaphor and imagery and attempt to deal with truths as well as facts. 
 
Carmine Dandrea 
 
From the book: 
 
Child At The Gate 
 
       Hoengsong 
 
Our cannon with blistering heat 
bombarded hills; 
the air was sweet 
with smoke curled up 
from village streets 
like fingers 
on a blackened hand. 
 
Later, as I passed a gate 
that smoldered still 
as if from hate 
which we had spilled, 
I saw a naked boy 
with hands and body black, 
ill-powdered 
from exploding shells. 
 
I will come back, 
I thought; 
and the child, distraught, 
waved his charred hand 
at me as I went by 
with Roman pennies 
on my eyes. 
 
Honest the feelings 
in our veins at times, 
but I was on my way 
up to our lines 
and never passed 
that gate again. 
 
Now, the boy 
forever cries, 
and I tell myself 
once more the lie 
that, after all, 
I really tried. 
 
After graduating from Elmira Free Academy in Elmira, New York, Carmine Dandrea enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, trained at Parris Island, and enrolled in the Naval School Of Electronics at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Later, he served in a variety of posts until released into the inactive reserve. In July, 1950, a month after war started in Korea, he was recalled to active duty and posted to the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for Fleet Marine Force infantry training.  Crossing the Pacific aboard the U.S.N.S. General William O. Darby, he landed with other Lejeune marines at Po-Hang-dong, Korea, and was assigned to the 3rd Platoon, Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 5the Marine Regiment of the Ist Marine Division. There he served in .30 caliber light machine guns. He fought North Korean guerrillas in the Pohang-Yongchon-Andong Triangle, participated in Operation Killer, and fought at the battles of Wonju and Hoengsong. He was with the 5th Regiment when it fought against the Chinese 4th Field Army units during the Chinese 1951 Spring Offensive, and in September, 1951, he and his comrades defended the mountain ridge known as Luke's Castle at the Punchbowl where in a ferocious night battle he was badly wounded. He was awarded the Purple Heart medal in Hawaii, and spent nearly 9 months in a variety of hospitals recuperating. In May, 1952, he was posted to Brooklyn Navy Yard and released from active duty.  
 
  
The author as a Marine in Korea. 
 
Once in Korea is a 140 page hand-stitched paperbook with spine.   $18.00 
 
TO ORDER  ON-LINE                                
 
From the US        
 
 
From Canada   
 
 
From Other Countries           
       
 
 
 
******************************************** 
  Carmine Dandrea  
TRYING ON AMERICA 
A Mythos Of Immigrant Life 
 
For my grandparents, the DePiettos and the Dandreas, without whose incredible courage and vision in braving the crossing in steerage of the Atlantic to fulfill their American Dream, I would never have had the experience of trying on America.  Needless to say, it is also dedicated to all those Mamma Mias who threaded their way, in one fashion or another, through my life. 
Il loro coraggio e visione compie la mia vita. 
 
From the book: 
 
Coming to America 
 
If it was the Muccigrosso episode or not, 
Giacomino found an inspiration in a sheer aside, 
a mere passing remark made by a friend, 
Angelo Marino, who said that he would like 
sometime to see America, Land of the Free, 
and, perhaps, even be a dollar-rich Americano. 
And so then would Giacomino enlist his talent 
and his strength to travel steerage overseas 
to a world beyond anything that Genovese  
could imagine in his visions of spice and gold, 
in anything his New World depictions could unfold 
to his Spanish conquistadors, brazen and bold, 
or to his Spanish rulers who turned ultimately cold 
and brought him home, humiliated and in chains. 
 
Giacomino left his young wife and daughters on their own; 
came to America on a contract signed and sealed 
by M. Del Papa who fondled riches in his friendly hand,              
who lined his pockets with his countrymen, 
who kept Sabatini on his dole to play the role 
of sole support to Italian working men-- 
came to dig ditches for the railway beds, 
came to lay tarred ties and nail iron rails down 
for the Delaware & Lackawanna tracks 
running East to West, West to East 
and back, here in America, Land of the Free. 
 
Days added up to weeks, weeks to months; 
months morphed to years-5 to be exact. 
It was a fact the money grew too slow, 
given the costs to eat and live, the costs 
to keep Del Papa rich and Sabatini fat, 
to find relief from work at Jack's saloon 
to find there the boon of cheap red wine 
among the brisc players and all of that; 
the boon to ease the woes of weary men, 
men lonely for their families far away in Italy. 
But, then, came the day when Giacomino 
could count out money in his hand, 
enough to send Amelia in that far-off land 
passage money for three small souls to sail 
the vast Atlantic in the steerage hold 
of a small, cramped, cold Norwegian ship  
and passage money, too, for Giacomino 
to go to that small island in Manhattan's bay 
where nearly all Italian names were changed: 
James for Giacomino, Emily for Amelia 
and Grazia Maria to Grace Marie. 
 
 
My Father Fell Through Years of Light 
 
As I lost sight 
in my dark night 
of just how brilliant was his flight, 
my father fell through years of light. 
 
I had been too much concerned 
with just how  much my life had turned 
since his candescent arc had burned 
colors in my mind to have learned 
the lesson that his death's gyre drew. 
 
His life, an azimuth true 
to the compass point, grew 
arched as an arrow shot through 
the blue bow of heaven to imbue 
me with what he knew: 
love is the spectrum that burns through 
death's door when a life is true. 
 
 
 
Carmine Dandrea, Professor of literature and creative writing and former editor of  Blossom Review, was educated at Hobart College, Brown University, Elmira College, and Cornell University from which he received the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.  He has taught at Elmira Free Academy, Elmira College, Corning Community College, and Lake Michigan College.  Mr. Dandrea served in the United States Marine Corps and during the Korean War was awarded the Purple Heart Medal. He was a national winner in the Discovery '69 Program of the New York Poetry Center. His 1st book of poems, Heart's Crow, based on experiences in India, was published by P. Lal's Writers Workshop of Calcutta in 1972. His poems have been published in Plaintiff, Transition, Ego Flights, Michigan Magazine, Husson Review, Albion  and other  literary journals and anthologies. Over 40 of his poems have won prizes and awards. Most recently, he won First Prize in the 2010 prestigious Tom Howard Poetry Contest.  In 1977 the editors of the International Who's Who in Poetry awarded him a Certificate of Distinguished Contributions To Poetry. Wyndham Hall Press published his book-length sequence of poems, American Still Life, in 1992.  He has been a Scholar at the 1993 NEH Institute of Chinese Culture and Civilization at the East-West Center in Hawaii and has participated in the Center's 1994  Field Study in the People's Republic of China and its 1995  Field Study in India. His 3rd book, Liberation: a Journey to India, was published in 1995 by P. Lal of the Writers Workshop of Calcutta, India. FootHills Publishing released his 4th book, Undertaking The American Dream, in November, 2008.  P.Lal of The Writers Workshop of Calcutta published his 5th book, An Infinite Human Tale, in July, 2009. 
 
An ardent practitioner of poetry as oral art, Carmine Dandrea has read his work in Athens, Beirut, Istanbul, New Delhi and throughout India, in Katmandu, Honolulu, in Ireland, The People's Republic of China, and in the United States. 
 
TRYING ON AMERICA is a 96 page hand-stitched paper book with spine - $16.00.  
 
TO ORDER  TRYING ON AMERICA 
 
 
ON-LINE                                          
 
From the US      
 
 
From Canada      
 
 
From Other Countries           
 
 
************************ 
  Undertaking the   
American Dream 
 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
Counting Out My Growth In Deaths      
A Karate Expert Kills A Car      
The 1st Of November      
The Image In The Mirror      
Sunrise In Chicago      
Alone In The House      
An Elegy In Spring      
Rising After Midnight      
The Man From Yesterday      
The Flower Man Is Gone      
An Escape From The Institution      
A Trinity For Maladjustment      
How The Old Man Died      
A Report From The Clinic      
Everything Is Springtime And Great Beauty      
Jungle      
Farm Auction      
Dreamland And Charles Bukowski      
Melville      
Estrangement      
On The Eve Of The Gunfighter's Death      
Undertaking The American Dream      
The Will That In The Sunset Finds Release      
Dirge For The Dead Anatoly      
Hothouse      
A Bird In Winter      
Upstate March      
Visiting The Cages In Bombay      
In The Madras Market      
The Highway To Delhi      
Waiting For The Third Wave In      
To A Korean Comfort Girl, Shot Sniping      
I Find The Dead Chinaman      
Easter, 1951      
Rescue By Helicopter      
Cheese      
The Blue Sky Motel      
A Dead Horse In The Supermarket      
Piece De Resistance      
 
Sequence: Those Inscrutable Chinese: 
       
       Lady With A Small Dog      
       Lunch At The Chinese National Art Institute          
       Shao Shi Peng Speaks Toilets      
       Mr.Gupta, Mr. Li       
   
Everyone Loved Fala      
Her Room At Night      
The Universe Of Death      
A Fable Of Flies      
M. Del Papa      
My Rich Croatian Uncle, Andy Smith      
The School Photographer Takes My Picture      
Dilemma      
All The Little Comforts      
Jumping Off The Eiffel Tower      
I Love You, Minnie Wantagh, In The A.& P.      
 
 
 
From the Book: 
 
COUNTING OUT MY GROWTH IN DEATHS 
 
This sun-filled Sunday morning 
when I woke, 
I knew that you would  not; 
I knew that you had gone, 
and that your eyes 
were closed to Sundays  
and to sun. 
 
All my life 
I have counted out my growth  
in deaths 
until they have become 
the total of my time 
as every stone 
that makes a cairn 
becomes a marker of the spot; 
and your death, Grandfather, 
is only one 
among the many deaths 
I register; 
but how special to my growth 
it is, I think I know. 
 
At ninety years, your  mind alive 
to Sundays and to sun, 
you simply fell asleep at five- 
a quiet afternoon of naps- 
and died. No pain we knew of 
crossed you in that hour. 
Of course, you were alone, 
and that was fitting too. 
The family had gone home 
and left the dream you had 
to you . 
 
Who could have known, 
although we were aware 
at ninety every moment spins 
a pinwheel in the sky, 
and every arrow spun 
is ever pointed straight. 
Death smiles, sweet and sure 
as lovers do in summer sun, 
each time you close your eyes. 
 
With you, another part of time 
that calibrates my growth 
and scales love has gone. 
The sun of yesterday 
will not be here tomorrow. 
The sun, however, rises 
as perhaps I do. 
But you, old dial, stand still 
the farthest measure of my hour. 
 
I have counted out my growth 
in deaths, 
and yours is shortening 
my life's shadow. 
My growth slows 
with fainter, thinner line  
to mark my moments 
in creative light. 
The sun at noon is nude, 
and so am I. 
 
 
DILEMMA 
 
I've been reading evolution theory, 
trying to get back 
into the primal  mud of pond behind the farm. 
 
How hard it is to do 
after Adam and the naming of things: 
after the tawny lion and the slippery toad, 
after the giant Redwood and the warty weed, 
after the telescoping of giraffe, 
the chipmunk chittering and the lisp 
of squirrels sliding the telephone lines, 
after the titmouse teetering 
on the thinnest branch and the great crow 
curving through the sky 
in sheer, black-robed telegraphy. 
 
How hard it is to do 
after the  wonderful fib 
of Eve and Adam's rib, 
after the infamy of apple, 
the notoriety of glitter 
surrounding the snake, 
the Father filled with wrath, 
unforgiving, relentless, but 
promising some future fruit. 
 
I'm sure that science is a useful thing, 
but how drab and gray it is 
beside such metaphors 
that ring and sing. 
 
 
Undertaking the American Dream 
is a 112-page hand-stitched paper book with spine. 
$16.00 
 
 
TO ORDER  ON-LINE        
 
From the US or Canada       
 
 
From Canada      
 
 
 
From Other Countries           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 |