By Chris Rotolo
What is the nature of an artist?
Are they meant to cast a beacon in a world with so much darkness; or to traverse a lonesome path while bearing their soul to the masses? Do they paint with soothing brush strokes to infuse beauty into scenes of anguish and heartache?
Maybe the nature of an artist is to remain undefined; to reside at the epicenter of contradiction where they can witness the world around them and reflect it through a personalized lens that helps their community process events, to love and heal.
Emanuel di Pasquale has spent a lifetime at the crossroads of this dichotomy, finding moments of tranquility in an oceanic orchestra playing outside his Long Branch home; grace in the face of tragedy at his Tarrytown, New York, high school; and satisfaction in capturing lunch in a local river near his childhood home in the southern Italian region of Sicily.
“My father died when I was very young, and my family pulled me out of school so I could go to work selling bread. But when I had time to myself, I remember taking that time to be alone and simply notice things,” said di Pasquale, who earlier this month was named Monmouth County Poet Laureate by the board of county commissioners.
“I was interested in connecting with things around me and figuring out how to be resourceful. I would swim in the river and catch eels for my mother for dinner. I would move rocks around by the edge of the river to find crabs, and make a small fire out of dried grass to cook them. If I didn’t find anything at the river, it was fine, because then I could walk outside of the city and pick an orange from a wild tree. Everything was an opportunity for connection and discovery,” di Pasquale told The Two River Times.
Born in 1943, di Pasquale said it was his mother Raffaella who wanted to bring him to America to pursue a better life. The voyage across the Atlantic finally occurred in 1956, and di Pasquale and his family arrived in New York Harbor.
“I’ll never forget looking over the side of the ship and seeing the Statue of Liberty staring down at me. I was in the land of the free. Anything was possible,” he said.
During the early years after his arrival in America, di Pasquale taught himself how to speak English fluently by singing along to Frank Sinatra records and listening to talk radio, namely storyteller and humorist Jean Shepherd, who is best known for writing and narrating the popular holiday film “A Christmas Story.”
“The language started to come easy to me when I realized that so much of English is based in Italian and Latin; half of the English words sounded like words I was already using, like ‘table’ and ‘tavolo.’ It came pretty naturally and unlocked American life for me,” said di Pasquale, who within nine years of arriving in New York had graduated high school, earned a scholarship to Adelphi University, attended graduate school at New York University, and landed a teaching position at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina in the 1960s.
Experiencing a segregated South left a sour taste in di Pasquale’s mouth, prompting a move to Middlesex County College in 1968, where he remained for 52 years until retiring in June 2020.
“I left when they came up with Zoom classes,” he quipped. “I loved teaching and being in a classroom, and how the use of technology could help enhance a lesson. But teaching and sharing ideas is an interaction that is meant to be done together, in person. Like when I would teach ‘Nightingale’ by John Keats; I would have all the students go to their phones and pull up video of a nightingale singing. The whole room would be full of the birdsong while we read.”
Di Pasquale’s path toward education was rooted in his writing talent, a way with words he discovered in Sleepy Hollow, New York, after the sudden passing of a peer.
“A young man, a very loving and truly kind person, suffered a brain injury while playing football and died shortly thereafter. Something compelled me to write about him, to capture his qualities so our community was able to see him, and remember him,” di Pasquale said. “I don’t know where it comes from, or why I see things the way I do, or hear them so clearly. I can’t explain it.”
Years later, after relocating from Sea Bright to Long Branch, di Pasquale witnessed the devastation left in the wake of Super Storm Sandy and, once again, from tragedy the words flowed through him.
“There was darkness, but there were also the songs of the winds on the beach, and seagulls soaring like crucifixes, watching over our communities. The boardwalk was coming back to life. The wood was replaced. The lampposts were rising like warriors. We were coming back stronger,” he said.
His Sandy-inspired prose earned him the title of Long Branch Poet Laureate in 2014. With his recent recognition, di Pasquale has become the first county poet laureate since Anna M. McNeill, who held the title from 1995 until her passing in 1998.
“The position of Poet Laureate is a seasoned poet appointed by a governing body to compose poems for special occasions and to promote artistic and literary expression within the community,” commissioner Director Thomas A. Arnone said. “We thank Emanuel for volunteering his time and incredible skills.”
The article originally appeared in the February 23 – March 1, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
