Black Butterfly Dust

Autor/in

Solinga, Jean-Yves

Jean-Yves Solinga is a poet of immense ability and range. His poetry is a product and symbolically reflects a life from birth to adulthood of cultural duality and a search for the cool plains of resolution with the past. He came from the heat of Morocco to the cold coastal waters and countryside of New England.His father, a gendarme, mother, sister, and brother had gone through the tragic war years of occupation in Marseille, France. He was then transferred after WWII in 1946 to Sidi Bel Abbès, where Jean-Yves was born in the hospital that serviced the Headquarters of the French Foreign Legion on the periphery of the Sahara in Algeria. The family traveled again with Jean-Yves only a month old, to Salé, just South of Sidi Moussa, in Morocco, where his father was posted. The journey was very difficult for the adults, but Jean-Yves spent most of it comfortably sleeping on the garments in a suitcase. The family settled, and Jean-Yves spent an idyllic childhood in the sun of North Africa. He attended French grammar and secondary schools. His memories of that time are of the joy of being aware of the pleasure of sight; the cocoon of the innocence of youth unconscious of geopolitical matters. His family, having decided to settle in America, sent Jean-Yves, at age 14, ahead alone in order not to miss the start of the school term. Living in New England, he would experience firsthand one of his many future encounters with the freezing cold and snow, which, up to that time, had only been seen on Christmas cards. A new and completely different life began.He had already written poetry by the time of his bachelor's degree and a brief tour of duty in the US Army, after which he began a career teaching French Language, Culture, and Literature in Connecticut schools and colleges. He completed a Masters and then a Ph.D. on North Africa before retiring in 2004, at which time he earnestly concentrated on his writing.