HOME, THE FARM

A captivating poetry collection inspired by the author’s family farm and orchard in Rhode Island.

Though Sasso pursued writing and publishing as an adult, the natural surroundings of his youth clearly made their marks on him. These poems take readers back to Avellino, Italy, from which the author’s great-grandfather set sail for the United States. The grandfather planted apple trees as “faith fruit,” because they don’t bear apples for eight to nine years. Over the course of 60-plus poems, Sasso explores all the challenges of farm life, from tractor troubles to a 68-day drought and underground fires. The themes of faith and death recur as the family struggles to survive working the land. Eventually, the farmers’ bodies give out, and their lifestyle is abandoned. A vacant home, an empty shed, a rusty tractor, and an overgrown orchard are all that remain. Sasso deeply grounds his work in the land he knows so well. From the “dark, wet / fertile” earth and “the knife of wind” to the “soot-stained snow” and the sunset like “a drawstring closing a black satin bag,” the poet evokes rural Rhode Island. He also pays as much attention to the people who populate the farm, orchard, and surrounding community. You can practically smell the “beer swollen, sweat-sour men” working the field with scythes and see a father eating “watery egg, / weak tea, gray toast” in a dark kitchen at 2 a.m. Some of the poems feel superfluous and barely qualify as poetry, such as “Farm Inventory,” which is a list of tools used by the grandfather farmer. Sasso also sticks to free verse throughout the entire book, which can wear on the reader; greater variety of form would have made this a more dynamic read.

A vivid, visceral portrait of family farm life.