W. S. Di Piero was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s College and his master’s degree from San Francisco State College. He has also had a long teaching career at such universities as Louisiana State University, Northwestern University, and Stanford University, where he still teaches. Di Piero was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He often writes about growing up in his neighborhood of South Philadelphia, and the Italian-American working class families who largely populated the area.
More By This Poet
Big City Speech
Use me
Abuse me
Turn wheels of fire
on manhole hotheads
Sing me
Sour me
Secrete dark matter’s sheen
on our smarting skin
Rise and shine
In puddle shallows
under every Meryl Cheryl Caleb Syd
somnambulists and sleepyheads
Wake us
Speak to us
Bless what you’ve nurtured...
Chicago and December
Trying to find my roost
one lidded, late afternoon,
the consolation of color
worked up like neediness,
like craving chocolate,
I’m at Art Institute favorites:
Velasquez’s “Servant,”
her bashful attention fixed
to place things just right,
Beckmann’s “Self-Portrait,”
whose fishy fingers seem
never to do a day’s work,
the great stone lions...