A New Life with Bianca

"Modeled after Dante's 'La Vita Nuova', Petrarch's 'Canzoniere', and Spenser's 'Amoretti', 'A New Life with Bianca' chronicles a young man's passion for a widow his age, from their first encounter in a café and initial courtship, to their shot-gun wedding and comfortable domesticity, to her untimely death from breast cancer. At every stage of their relation-ship, the speaker-an Italian American, latter-day bohemian who reads poetry, watches indie films and frequents the MoMA-tries to express and interpret his feelings through the medium of culture. The gap between art and experience, however, proves too wide." -Anthony Di Renzo