Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (July 5, 1949 - December 22, 2019) was an

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poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. In 2005 he became the second

Poet Laureate of Toronto The Poet Laureate of Toronto is the city's literary ambassador and advocate for poetry, language and the arts. The poet laureate's mandate includes the creation of a legacy project that is unique to the individual. They also attend events across th ...

. Born in

Arezzo Arezzo ( , , ) , also ; ett, 𐌀𐌓𐌉𐌕𐌉𐌌, Aritim. is a city and ''comune'' in Italy and the capital of the province of the same name located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about southeast of Florence at an elevation of above sea level. ...

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, his family immigrated to Canada in 1952. Di Cicco was brought up in several

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n cities, among them

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, Montreal, Quebec and

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. In the early 1970s he attended the

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. While working part-time as a bartender at the university, he began to publish poems in little magazines. He has since written 13 books of poetry and in 1978 edited a volume of verse by Italian-Canadian poets, ''Roman Candles'' which became a seminal volume for the birth of Italian-Canadian literature. His poems, consisting of deep images in

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s of free verse - with lines consisting of irregular numbers of

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

s and (hypothetical) feet - often referred to di Cicco's immigrant and Italian-family experiences. In books like ''Flying Deeper Into the Century'' (1982) and ''The Tough Romance'' (1979) he communicated a modern, sensitive awareness of the confusing welter of 20th-century life. Di Cicco's unmetrical but imagistic lines flowed on, often with cumulative power, to release their tension at the end of their stanzas. Di Cicco gradually felt called to a

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religious life. Reducing his output of verse, he spent a period in an

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north of Toronto. Di Cicco then undertook religious studies and became a friar with a parish in

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, Ontario. In the 1990s he resumed writing and publishing poems, producing a selected volume and several others. In 2005, he was chosen Poet Laureate of Toronto; he published a poem weekly in ''

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'' Sunday newspaper. In 2004-5 he taught at the University of Toronto. The writer and critic Joseph Pivato edited, ''Pier Giorgio Di Cicco: Essays on His Works'' (2011), an important analysis of his poetry. His latest book (2018) is entitled ''Wishipedia''.

Selected bibliography

*''We are the Light Turning'' - 1976 *''Dancing in the House of Cards'' - 1977 *''The Sad Facts'' - 1977 *''The Circular Dark'' - 1977 *''A Burning Patience'' - 1978 *''Roman Candles'' - 1978 (editor) *''The Tough Romance'' - 1979 *''Flying Deeper Into the Centuries"' - 1982 *''Dark to Light'' - 1983 *''Women We Never See Again'' - 1984 *''Post-sixties Nocturne'' - 1985 *''Virgin Sciences'' - 1986 *''The Tough Romances'' - 1990 *''Living in Paradise'' - 2001 *''The Honeymoon Wilderness'' - 2002 *''The Dark Time of Angels'' - 2003 *''Dead Men of the Fifties'' - 2004 *''The Visible Worlds'' - 2006 *''Municipal Minds: Manifestos for the Creative Cities'' - 2007 *''Early Voices: Flying Deeper into the Century & Virgin Science'' - 2009 *''Names of Blessings'' - 2009

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Di Cicco, Pier Giorgio 1949 births 2019 deaths Canadian male poets Italian emigrants to Canada Poets Laureate of Toronto 21st-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian male writers Poet priests