Wholly Falsetto With People Dancing

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. An older man's not-so-divine comedy, Vangelisti's FALSETTO is in three parts, corresponding to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise: namely, "Westernmost," the Los Angeles of a poet's daybook; the fool's purgatory of "An Italian Journal," some three weeks up & down the peninsula; and finally, "Wholly Falsetto with People Dancing," an alphabetical memoir of that invisible country of dead poets and loves that are no more. The trips through the first two territories in the work, Los Angeles and Italy, are documented more or less "on the run," in stark contrast to the contemplative nature of the final section of recollections. Among the several subjects interwoven throughout the narrative is Vangelisti's exploration of an 'un-American' literary tradition, set up against that of the dominant Anglo-American culture.