One of the great things about reading Frank's poems is that I was there for the genesis of some of them. He has an eye, an ear, and a heart that cuts right through to a New York long gone but still floating around the gargoyles of midtown. I'll read a poem of his and be instantly transported to the sweat-stained, passionate days of Paddy Reilly's and Rocky Sullivan's, and I'm so glad that Frank took the time to shepherd those crazy memories and turn them into fluid words on a page. Read these poems, and get a glimpse of lives that may have been abandoned but were well and truly lived.
--Larry Kirwan
Larry Kirwan is a musician, author, playwright, and host of Celtic Crush, a radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio. He was the cofounder and leader of the seminal NYC Irish rock band Black 47. His hit Broadway musical Paradise Square, which Larry conceived and cowrote the book for, made its debut on April 2022. It had originally appeared as Hard Times: An American Musical. Paradise Square was flattered when it took home the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Larry is currently completing work on his next Broadway musical, All the Rage.
*****
"The night is forgiving as the day never is...," and so we climb into the backseat of Frank Perero's twilight journey of faith in his first collection of poetry, Drive through the Night. Perero's barroom balladeer tone goes from lofty to harsh reality, his rhythm an intimate dialogue between friends. Should you choose to travel with this everyman, you will encounter Sal the Barber, Clancy, and Sophocles. Wrapped in his profound aloneness, this fugitive of loves gone wrong, promises broken, and dreams shattered, Perero's words have the power to heal, comfort, and soften the blows of a chilly night as we, too, "join the parade..."
--Maria Lisella
Maria Lisella is an award-winning poet and travel writer. She served three years as the poet laureate of Queens in New York City. Her lauded works include Amore on Hope Street, Two Naked Feet, and Thieves in the Family. Maria is a poet laureate fellow of the Academy of American Poets and is the new poetry editor at Bordighera Press.
*****
In his first published collection of poems, Drive Through the Night, Frank Perero tells us he feels "the might of the universe" when he puts "pen to paper." Perero is an old-time balladeer whose swordlike lines slash at the dragon of twenty-first-century angst as he soothes and entertains us in our interminable struggles against ennui, unrequited love, aging, adversity, modernity, melancholy, loneliness, and loss of faith. He is an indefatigable cheerleader of the spirit. And at the end of the day, we find ourselves at peace, a passenger of his poetry, sailing with him through the night."
--Gil Fagiani
Gil Fagiani was a poet, scholar, and translator. His poetry collections include Rooks; Grandpa's Wine, translated into Italian by Paul D'Agostino; A Blanquito in El Barrio; Chianti in Connecticut; Serfs of Psychiatry; and Stone Walls. His latest book is Logos (Guernica Editions 2015). Sadly, Gil passed away in April 2018. May he rest in peace.
