Salvatore Buttaci

  It takes a great deal of courage to submit a manuscript for possible publication. Many writers spend months, even years, putting down on paper what they feel will be, if not the Great American Novel, then at least a darn good one. They look back with pleasure on the long hours of pounding the keyboard in producing that first draft. With less excitement they recall the grueling days and nights editing that first attempt into something they hope will be presentable in the marketplace. Writing is a mixed bag of joy and woe. Who among writers have not delighted in the birth of an idea they recognize as plot-worthy? How many sleepless nights did they toss in bed, head filled with scenes and characters and lines of clever dialogue? Life itself seems to revolve around that one conviction: I can write this book. Readers will love it so much they’ll spread the word and it’ll sell more copies than I can ever imagine. Now here is the misstep on the march towards literary success. Once the manuscript is submitted and accepted for publication, many authors find comfortable chairs in which to rest. According to their way of thinking, the labor is done. After all, they wrote the books, didn’t they? Now it falls in the court of the publisher to sell enough copies to make the writing of the book worth the time and effort. The time and the effort? There is more to being a book author than...

               MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1950) I first met Ray Bradbury in the pages of his book The Illustrated Man way back in 1951. His easy flowing, poetic style of writing science fiction and fantasy hooked me into a love of these genres to this very day. From that book came others throughout the Fabulous Fifties and beyond. They were books I had to read because Ray Bradbury wrote them and Ray Bradbury ranked first among all of my favorite authors: Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Clifford D. Simak, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, C.M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, Poul Anderson, Frederic Brown, and Fritz Leiber.  My childhood was a wonderful time to be an avid reader delighting in vicarious adventures. Thanks to Bradbury and the others, those 25-cent paperbacks allowed me to travel through space and time, hitch my imagination to theirs, and leave Earth if only for the duration of each exciting novel. Ray Bradbury, who passed away at 91, on June 05, 2012, was the last of my literary heroes to leave this planet. I miss them all, but especially Bradbury because he more than the others started me writing his same kind of fiction. No, we never met in person. He never stood at my side, as my parents did, encouraging me to take up my pencil or pen and get that story down. But being a Bradbury fan, I learned by his example. I internalized the advice he offered young aspiring...

THE LILY PAD, THE JAPANESE BRIDGE Painting by Claude Monet (1899); Poem by Sal Buttaci (1994)   Who could imagine what Monet was thinking when he took his brush to this! Ask him what inspired him  and he will no doubt lie, say "The Japanese Bridge" or "The lily pond: the way the lilies sit on the brown river" or "The mood I was in, the feeling  I have captured in this work."   It is true Monet one afternoon  came to the bridge, to this lily pond,  an easel under his arm, paints and brushes in a wooden box. For a moment he surveyed the scene, thought it peaceful, but would have moved on  had he not heard a frog croak in the intricacy of the lily pads, stretch its legs, leap into the air and dive into the brown river water.   The painter stood there, concentric water circles  like the spin of a child's pinwheel mesmerizing him. Only seconds before  nothing moved here, he thought to himself. How peaceful!  It is already a painting, another scene for memory: The arc of the bridge,  the unmoving lilies, the foliage, the hanging trees, the water reflecting the stillness--   I could let it be, walk away, look elsewhere.    Monet waited for the frog to surface but before long the quiet returned and it was once again as it had been. Already the painter was laying down his coat on dry grass, mentally mixing the paints before setting them...

THE CART: THE ROAD UNDER SNOW IN HONFLEUR Painting by Claude Monet, 1865; Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994 The road under snow we ought best not to complain about! Yet we do so every winter, don't we? You say the jostling ride hurts your back or the old horse is too slow or that I see so poorly I cannot avoid the rocks jutting in our path.   As for me, I detest leaving our home where a burning fireplace kept us safe and warm. Begrudgingly, we voyage here these kilometers to spend the holidays with your parents and with mine.   Why not instead look at this adventure with a different eye! Directly ahead of us or sideways at the houses, the farms, the drifts of snow, and think good thoughts to while away the time. My dear, what can we expect? It is winter after all. In winter it snows. Sometimes it snows quite heavily.   The same trees you admired when they were in green bloom you now disown because their leaves are gone, because snow freezes the branches from which hang like fruit heavy ice jewels.   I look to the snow-laden rooftops, and see the grey smoke puff from chimneys. A hint of laughter from inside those houses makes me envy the comfortable who wait for their holiday meal. But, no!  We mustn't waste our time this way! In Honfleur our old parents count the minutes of these two hours as if we two were...

BIG JOE HAMMER DR0VE THIS CAR BUT THE HAT HE WORE ON HIS HEAD Yuh want my real name or duh one duh guys gimme back on Grand Street when I wuz twelve or doiteen? My mudder give me names long as yuh arm! "Where dja dig 'em up?" I used  tuh tease de ol‘ lady.. Back in a Ol' Country––Sicily––dey han’ out names  like candy: da more da sweeta.   Dey name me Giuseppe Gaetano Angelo Martello. Ain't it a mout'ful? Giuseppe wuz my granfadder,  Gaetano my old lady's brudder in Crown Heights, an' Angelo, duh name a duh baby my mudder lost when he wuz maybe two.   Martello: that's my last name--dat means "Hammer" so, growin' up in Williamsboig, Brooklyn, ain't nobody gonna ask fuh ya baptism papis, right? Ain't no way I'm gonna say, "Call me Giuseppe," right? From duh woid "Go" dey wuz callin' me "Big Joe Hammer" I wuz big, know what I mean? An' I hit like a hammer: I busted heads. Yeah, nobody messed wit' Big Joe Hammer.   What's that? My family? My blood family?   You mean my mudder, my fadder, coupla sisters. When dat baby Angelo died in duh crib I was duh only boy, an' Pop said "Stay in School. Loin duh books. Go tuh college  and be somebody." You hear dat?  Be somebody.   Forget about it!  I wuz already Somebody. My old man he wuz woiking day an' night Pressin' suits in dat hot room. For...