Jersey Shore Magazine

J e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 6 54 JERSEY SHORE PEOPLE POET AT TWILIGHT, continued from page 53 adjective preceding grandfather," he writes, "[the term] moves me a little farther from the family circle." He continues, "Christmas conjures up memories of too many Christmases that have past." But his son's fond holiday recollections and reading one night to his grandchildren lend him a "renewed spirit at age seventy" and remind him "love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." The taut cord between love, loss, and moving on is something Finale faced not just in recent years, but early in life. In "Touched By The Trees," he talks of the tree that "cradled his grief" as he hid among its leaves, newly motherless at the age of just eight. He visits the same loss in the poem "The Jar," written on a trip to Spain and also included in the third volume. "I think [her death] had a lot of influence…it led me to deeper thoughts [than] if I had been a happy kid," he says. Yet with each loss, there is a redemption in his writing, often found in nature or human connec- tion. In Finale's own life, this is true as well. He is now happily dating a Finale at a recent writers' conference with his newly published coffee table book about the Jersey Shore, To The Shore Once More, Volume III. The volume is the third and final in the bestselling series. Susan Allen woman he first met back when he was a teacher, though "I was very married then," he says. I laugh at the "very." He does too. And tell- ingly, his wife's eclectic collection of earrings still hang in the downstairs bathroom. When I ask about them, he notes their colorful quality and says the grandchildren took some of them. But it is clearly a touch- stone—a visual reminder in hand picked baubles of art that adorned a person he loved deeply. Barbara, and Finale's new love interest, now both play prominently in his con- versational references, which is not surprising given the personal nature of his writing. A Brooklyn raised Catholic who went to school on a track scholar- ship, Finale didn't discover a love of poetry until college. His father had been born in Italy but came to the U.S. as a child. His father was also an athlete, "drank a lot of beer," and changed the family name from Fennelli. Finale recalls how his father "read to me when I was a child and later recited poems aloud, especially Edgar Allen Poe's. I know he loved the musical quality of Poe's poems… I remember him reciting 'Annabel Lee' and 'The Raven' with great gusto. My poem 'A Child's Story' [in volume III] comes from his bedtime readings to me from The Little Golden Books." Interestingly, Finale's high school was the one featured in the popular John Travolta sitcom, Welcome Back Kotter. As a poet, many of his recol- lections, however, are more sensory than biographical. "There was a small garden that grew tomatoes just a floor below my window in Brooklyn," To The Shore Once More, Volume III.

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