New York State Poet Laureate Emeritus, Joseph Tusiani, was a 2008 Columbus Celebration Honoree. He was also a devoted brother to our Foundation Member, Michael Tusiani. Joseph Tusiani was an acclaimed poet and writer in four languages. Born in San Marco in 1924, he earned a doctorate from the University of Naples in 1947 with a thesis on William Wordsworth. Later that year, he emigrated from Italy to the United States where he began his career as a successful academic. Tusiani was the author of numerous collections of poetry. His Latin works included Melos Cordis (1955), Rosa Rosarum (1984), In Exilio Rerum (1985), and In Nobis Caelum (2007). In Italian, he was the author of (among other works) Lo Speco Celeste (1956), Odi Sacre (1957) and Il Ritorno (1992). Earlier English collections of note were Rind and All (1962), The Fifth Season (1964) and Gente Mia and Other Poems (1978). One of his later English collections, A Clarion Call, was published in 2016. Columbus Citizens Foundation had the great honor of distributing signed copies to our High School and College Scholarship recipients the year of its publication. Tusiani will be remembered for his Italian, English, Latin and Apulian poetry and the numerous awards and accolades he received for his work. In 1954, he was the first American to receive the Greenwood Prize of the Poetry Society of England. In 1986, The American Association of Teachers of Italian nominated him as the first recipient of the AATI Distinguished Service Award. In 2007, he was presented with the Keys to the City of Florence for his contributions to the English-speaking world’s knowledge of Florentine poets from Dante and Boccaccio to Petrarch and Machiavelli.