Vittoria Repetto reads from Not Just A Personal Ad

Vittoria Repetto’s precise, compact, and colloquial cadences in the poems of Not Just A Personal Ad (Guernica Editions, 2006) assemble the reality of growing up lesbian in lower Manhattan, loving and losing a mother, hating and reconciling with a father. Running, stumbling, recovering, her lines replicate the struggle between the contradictions of love and desire, work and leisure, pride and passion. No holds barred erotic episodes are unforgettably incised. Without deprecating her innate butchness, Repetto emerges as a transcendently feminine person who has stitched together in these poems an entrancing crazy quilt that unabashedly reveals the here and now of human life, New York style.