Primo wrote most of his poems in English, including one addressed to his mother (Mamma); very few of them are in Italian. Among those written in his native tongue, he dedicated one to Italy.
The poem is written on the letterhead of the Maxwell House Hotel, Nashville, TN, where Bartolini lodged between 1913 and 1914.
Completed in 1866 using slave labour, the Maxwell House Hotel was destroyed by fire on Christmas Night 1961. The Sun Trust Building has now taken its place.
In Madre Patria, Bartolini tranfers allegorically the concept of motherhood to his homeland, a place of which the poet lauds the ‘gentle’ language, the beauty of landscapes and skies, the courage and resilience of the soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Piave.
Italy is also lauded in one of the many poems in English written by Bartolini. The reminiscence of the Motherland brings to the poet's mind some sterotypical markers of the lost patria: a land where birds sing, the sun shines and which is a constant and unavoidable source of inspiration for foreign poets.
The final lines also emphasize the sense of loss that makes the migrant's experience so painful for those who have left.
