For not for the Walker, nor for my heart is there a second, a minute, an hour or anything that is in the old clock -- there is nothing but the night, the sleepless night, the watchful, wistful night, and footsteps that go, and footsteps that come and the wild, tumultuous beatings that trail after them forever.
Arturo Giovannitti was born January 7, 1884, in Ripabottoni in what is now the Province of Campobasso, Italy, at the time part of the Abruzzi but now part of Molise. He immigrated to Canada in 1900 and, after working in a coal mine and railroad crew, began preaching in a Presbyterian mission. He soon came to the United States, where he studied at Union Theological Seminary. Although he did not graduate, he ran rescue missions for Italians in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. He also began writing for the weekly newspaper of the Italian Socialist Federation. In 1911, he became the newspaper's Editor.
All three defendants were acquitted, on November 26, 1912.
In the wake of the trial, Giovannitti published his first book of poems, Arrows in the Gale, in 1914. In an introduction to the book, Helen Keller wrote: "Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt against the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance which too many of us accept." But Giovannitti, following ten months in prison, avoided involvement in volatile strikes. Instead, he devoted himself to poetry, editing radical journals and protesting World War I, which claimed two of his brothers.
In 1950, Giovannitti was stricken by paralysis in both legs. He remained bedridden until his death in the Bronx, in 1959.
