Native publishes new collection
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Last updated: Thursday April 15, 2010, 3:18 AM
Belleville Times
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Anthony Buccino's new collection "American Boy: Pushing Sixty, working class verse about life and growing up in New Jersey" (Cherry Blossom Press, 68 pages, $14.95, ISBN 9780982567708) recalls the cold war, parochial school and simply playing with friends or with his "little men" in the Baby Boomer years.
"Much of the work collected here reflects on growing up in Belleville and growing old in Nutley," he said.
From the center of the Baby Boom, his verse views life and growing up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and growing older in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
"Rumours of War" reflects on those air raid drills from Holy Family School, and "Caroms" recalls playing that game and losing a smallest puppy contest at Booth Park in the summer. "Games We Played" hints of those rounds of endless Monopoly games.
But like anyone born in Baby Boom years, from 1946 to 1964, the writing on the wall says some of us have already reached sixty and others, like Buccino are pushing sixty.
"Now's a good time to put a life in perspective," said Buccino. "The way things keep going, and medicines keep improving, sixty just might be middle age for many of us. But this collection stops to look at how life's been so far. The good times, though not a lot of poets write about the good times, and the heartaches and how we're doing so far."
A New York City financial news editor by day, Buccino has been called "New Jersey's 'Garrison Keillor'" or something to that effect.' He published three books of essays based in and around Nutley and Belleville. He published two books of biographies of the hundreds of men from his home towns who died while in service.
Buccino published two collections of poetry, "Voices on the Bus" and "One Morning in Jersey City." He has been published in Paterson Literary Review; Celebrating William Carlos Williams and The Poetry of Place: North Jersey in Poetry; Voices in Italian Americana; Edison Literary Review, and Journal of New Jersey Poets.
Buccino created and maintains the New Jersey Poets and Poetry blog at http://njpoetspoetry.blog-spot.com/ , a continuing listing of poets and poetry news and events.
For more information, visit http://www.anthonybuccino.com/.
