Gil Fagiani’s “A Blanquito in El Barrio” bursts past easy first impressions and the confines of its own subjects. It complicates issues of a white visitor to a barrio of color and a temporary stay in a rough neighborhood through powerful, unflinching poetry of addiction and redemption.
The book works on several levels. Fagiani is the master of the brief poem—wrapping layers of meaning and imagery into scarce lines as in “Junkie’s Alarm Clock” and “Hands On”. This economy serves him in the longer poems as well—each line bursts with visual imagery bringing characters and neighborhood blocks back to vivid life. There’s also never any question that Fagiani isn’t simply observing addiction—but speaks from a place of experience.
The poems in Blanquito are sharp and compassionate portraits of a complex neighborhood–Harlem during the late sixties. These poems suggest some of the rage and alienation that would later find political voice in the decade’s upheaval. The stories Fagiani has to tell about his stay in El Barrio are rarely uplifting. Yet the stark manner in which he speaks of addiction, infidelity and violence never patronizes or descends into pat political pronouncements.
There are some who may question Fagiani’s license to speak of a El Barrio. Italian-Americans were largely on an exodus from Harlem by the time he arrived. Poems such as the “Litany of Saint Vito” –exaulting Vito Marcantonio, the staunchly anti-racist radical Congressman suggest a yearning for an Italian-American identity that didn’t run for the suburbs. In politics, contradictions are a thing to be ironed out until the crease is gone from the fabric. In this book, these contradictions provide a fantastic read and hard-earned insight into one of America’s most fabled and misunderstood neighborhoods.
-James Tracy
