Background
Bathanti was born July 20, 1953, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in East Liberty area of Pittsburgh.
("In Anson County, Joseph Bathanti's generous heart turns ...)
"In Anson County, Joseph Bathanti's generous heart turns the local into universal praises. Radiant as a welcome sun after rain, his reverence for people, places, and things fashions rare and extraordinary truths. Anson County is a substantive union of hymn and prayer." -Shelby Stephenson, author of Play My Music Anyhow
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935708813/?tag=2022091-20
(Winner of the Carolina Novel Award and a finalist for the...)
Winner of the Carolina Novel Award and a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, this is the story of Bobby Renzo, growing up in the late '50s and early '60s in the marginal East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, in the care of a beautiful, unmarried mother who raises questions and eyebrows among the devoutly Catholic, Italian-American residents.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1889199087/?tag=2022091-20
("Joseph Bathanti is a strong, eloquent voice in American ...)
"Joseph Bathanti is a strong, eloquent voice in American poetry. His poems emanate from deep within himself and his culture, a world of rich ethnic ties and associations. I love the luminous details that he uncovers, again and again, like holy mysteries. His poems, which often deal - overtly and covertly - with religious themes, are restorative. These are, indeed, poems of restoration. Bathanti returns often to the well of memory, and he draws a fresh, sweet water from those depths." - Jay Parini The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems and Benjamin's Crossing "I am a sucker for Pittsburgh poetry, but it's not just the location that moves me in Bathanti's book. I like the two main things: the outrageous and amazing memory of particulars, of things; and the mad and tender turns the work suddenly takes. Bathanti is loyal, maybe grudgingly, to a dear - a loved and hated - world. Throughout the narrative, his poetic strategies are marvelous; one poem after another is deft, and moving, and original. This is an important book." - Gerald Stern Lucky Life and Bread Without Sugar "I am enraptured by the poems in Restoring Sacred Art, Joseph Bathanti's volume of love/hate poems about growing up and contending with the physicality of Pittsburgh, that unforgettable city. The language is rich, metropolitan, and accomplished, resounding with the poet's deep memories of friendship, family, neighborhood, school agonies, old cars, Catholicism, games, fights, binges, discoveries, hard jobs, affections, memories of a place and time. The stories and lines are artfully constructed, building to the moving conclusion of the book, when the poet returns annually to visit his people and remember the city. He never stops saying goodbye." - Paul Zimmer Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems and Trains In the Distance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932842403/?tag=2022091-20
("In his title poem, Joseph Bathanti writes that 'Even a m...)
"In his title poem, Joseph Bathanti writes that 'Even a mincing moon off cotton will yield/light enough to walk by.' There is something of pale moonlight in all these poems, by which I scarcely mean that they are vague. Rather, things as ordinary as field cotton are seen in a way so original as to seem magical. The author has his rhetorical reasons to call this masterful book Land of Amnesia, but in fact that author forgets nothing. .... The delicious, full-throated lyricism of this volume would alone be enough to recommend it. That it grapples so bravely and brilliantly with what I must feebly call Things That Matter makes it indispensable." - Sydney Lea, founder of The New England Review
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981628079/?tag=2022091-20
(Twelve Poems, by Joseph Bathanti, is the 8th issue in a s...)
Twelve Poems, by Joseph Bathanti, is the 8th issue in a special series of digital and print chapbooks to honor the poets and writers who have published in the St. Andrews Review or through the St. Andrews University Press since 1969.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1511701528/?tag=2022091-20
(In a weaving together of contradictory realms--past and p...)
In a weaving together of contradictory realms--past and present, rustbelt city and rural/urban South, old-world Catholicism and backwoods Protestantism--Joseph Bathanti draws readers into the 1970s as protagonist George Dolce faces major upheaval in The Life of the World to Come. George aspires to leave his blue collar, Catholic neighborhood of East Liberty in Pittsburgh. He is on the cusp of graduation from college and headed for law school when he becomes entangled in a local gambling ring. After his father gets laid off at the steel mill, George dramatically increases his wagering to help his parents with finances. What's more, he allows his boss at his real job and love interest's father, a pharmacist named Phil Rosechild, to place bets through him with the gambling ring's volatile kingpin. As his parents' financial situation deteriorates, George delves deeper into gambling, and he even goes so far as to set up Phil by using the pharmacist's unschooled and ever-growing betting practices to his own end--cheating the father of the woman he loves. When Phil welches on a large bet that George has placed for him, George finds himself in life-threatening trouble and must abandon his law school dreams. He robs the pharmacy, steals the delivery car, and flees south. After his stolen car breaks down in Queen, North Carolina, he meets a young, mysterious woman known as Crow. The two form a bond and eventually take to the road in an attempt to reconcile their harrowing, often surreal destiny and to escape George's inevitable punishment.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1611174538/?tag=2022091-20
("When an avid reader of contemporary poetry discovers a b...)
"When an avid reader of contemporary poetry discovers a book so full of warmth and eloquent exactitude, she is grateful and excited to read more by the author. This was my first experience of reading Joseph Bathanti's fourth book of poems, This Metal. I felt humbled by reading a poet whose voice was strong, but I was simultaneously dazzled by a vocabulary rich in metaphor and inflected by the language of faith and place." From the Introduction, by Mary Jo Bona
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935708287/?tag=2022091-20
Bathanti was born July 20, 1953, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in East Liberty area of Pittsburgh.
After graduating from Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, he attended California State College.
He was named by Governor Bev Perdue as the seventh North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2012–2014. Early life and education
His working-class family included a steelworker father and a seamstress mother. In 1972, he transferred to the University of Pittsburgh and, in 1975, received a bachelor"s degree in English.
Personal life
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Bathanti traveled to North Carolina in 1976 as part of the Volunteers In Service To America (Volunteers in Service to America) program focusing on prison outreach.
He has continued to teach writing and hold workshops in prisons ever since. From 1985 to 1989, he worked closely with the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program which sought to bring talented artists from different disciplines to more rural towns and areas in the state.
His book They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina’s Visiting Artists, 1971-1995 chronicled the history of the program Bathanti is currently a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University.
Also at Appalachian State, he is Director of Writing in the Field as well as Writer-in-Residence for the Watauga Global Community.
He also serves as a mentor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. He was installed as the seventh North Carolina Poet Laureate on September 20, 2012, at a ceremony in Raleigh, North Carolina. Over the next two years he became an "ambassador of North Carolina literature" and was free to create his own long-term projects.
The position requires the laureate to participate in various literary activities across the state, working with "schools, community groups, and the press"
Since his appointment, he has been a part of over 250 events around North Carolina.
In 2014, Bathanti was named the first scholar-in-residence for the Heinz History Center"s Italian American Program in Pittsburgh. Focusing on Italian American history, he will create a body of work developed from the center"s Italian American Collection.
(Winner of the Carolina Novel Award and a finalist for the...)
(In a weaving together of contradictory realms--past and p...)
(Twelve Poems, by Joseph Bathanti, is the 8th issue in a s...)
("When an avid reader of contemporary poetry discovers a b...)
("In his title poem, Joseph Bathanti writes that 'Even a m...)
("In Anson County, Joseph Bathanti's generous heart turns ...)
("Joseph Bathanti is a strong, eloquent voice in American ...)
(Restoring Sacred Art)