PETER FORTUNATO grew up in Wappingers Falls and Poughkeepsie, New York at a family-run restaurant and resort much like the Villa Giustovera. His father was a stage magician and singer and his mother an extraordinary seamstress and cook. His grandparents and their friends were his earliest connection not only to Italy but also to the history of the Hudson Valley. Peter is a poet, painter, performer, ceremony maker and hypnotherapist, and recently retired from teaching at Cornell and Ithaca College. He has been a Buddhist for many years, as well as a shaman, Reiki master practitioner and Tarot mage. From 2005 – 2009 he taught writing to future doctors at Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar. He is currently at work on a memoir of those years he witnessed the stunning transformation of a desert country into a 21st Century society living under Islamic law, when he was privately a Buddhist practitioner and rode some of the most beautiful horses in the world.
Read BookTrib’s review of Peter’s book, Carnevale.
BOOKS:
A bell or a hook (1977)
Letters to Tiohero (1979)
Late Morning: New and Selected Poems (2013)
Entering the Mountain (2017)
Carnevale (Upcoming 2019)
Biggest literary influencers:
In no particular order, some of those most important to me: Anton Chekhov, Robertson Davies, Richard Russo, Alice Munro, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, James McConkey, Carl Jung, Ursula K. Le Guin
Last book read:
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
The book that changed your life:
Myths & Texts by Gary Snyder. When I read this in college I gained a new understanding of what American poetry might be and what I might become as a poet. The book is a linked series of poems, many of them concise narratives that weave together Snyder’s own back-country experiences with the myths of the indigenous peoples of America’s West Coast, as well as with his practice of Zen Buddhism. I had grown up as a country boy myself, a really close observer of nature and lover of wild places, and under the influence of Gary and other Beat writers, I would become a Zen Buddhist. A few years later, Gary would become a mentor and friend whose family my wife and I lived with in California, and the foundations were laid for many of my values.
Your favorite literary character:
That would have to be the protagonist of my own novel, Carnevale! Living through Guido Diamante’s fictional adventures, inhabiting him and being surprised by the choices he makes, as well as his mistakes, comprised for me a sort of parallel life, which I lived imaginatively for many years. When I finished the book I was sad to say goodbye to him, his family, and the fictional settings where we’d spent so much time together.
Currently working on:
I have a collection of short stories in the works, influenced by my experiences as an American Buddhist. I’m putting the finishing touches on my memoir about teaching and living and riding horses in Qatar: Drinking the Desert Wind. I’m always writing poetry and painting as well. I like to move among several projects simultaneously.
Words to live by:
“Roses are planted where thorns grow”—William Blake
Advice to new and aspiring authors:
Don’t simply aspire to write, just begin. A good way to jump into any project is to imagine you’re already writing in the middle of it.
Articles / Reviews:
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
Ithaca.com
