My poem "On The Scree" will be published in the Winter Issue of Qarrtsiluni, the theme of this issue will be "Health" http://qarrtsiluni.com/category/health/. "On The Scree" was a poem I wrote in September about a mountain walk I made in August up to 2300 metres into a chink in the rocks of the Mount Pomagagnon near Cortina on the Dolomites. A walk I was longing for despite the still raging, although not so violently as in July, gout on my foot. The longest part of the walk was on a scree where we sighted chamois. Unforgettable sight, unforgettable bright ground.
My wife who reads in English but also regularly in Italian found a new very short novel a few days ago by Erri De Luca, Il Peso Della Farfalla" "The Weight Of The Butterfly", Erri De Luca a famous Italian novelist and a notorious Bible scholar. My wife told me to read the book at once because the setting and atmosphere were very close to my poem "On The Scree".
I read "Il Peso Della Farfalla" this morning, in one go. Absolutely breathtaking. You feel the Bible in it and Melville, the sea depths translated into the mountain rocks. And The Scree. And The Chamois. It's a story of a sixty year old chamois and hybec hunter, who is also a poacher and a free climber, at the very end of his career and the end of everything. At the same time it's a story of an old chamois, he too, a king, at the end of his career. A great, noble career. The two will find their end close, very close together...
The prose is poetic in its neatness, dryness and frankness. Its reflections on a honed edge. Its terse acknowledging the inevitability of a last shore for all of us.
I, a bit freely, am translating short passages here hoping you all will be able to read this book in English soon ( although I know that some of you can read in Italian ):
On the bloodied horn of the winner the white butterflies alighted. One never left, for generations of butterflies, a petal beating in the wind...
He often lay down on the scree looking above at the child disarray of the clouds. He came to think that the matter around him was just made of a previous life, now expired. There was in the clouds the damp breath of those beasts he had shot, and there were the breathing dregs of men's forefathers. The ground which carried his weight was manured with their dust and ashes.
It was a perfect day, its texture was the neat border between time expired and time unknown.
Beasts stay in the present like bottled wine, ready to get out. Beasts know the time on time, when it's necessary to know it. To think about it before is man's ruin and doesn't make you ready for readiness.
He gazed up to say bye to the air and started the walk downhill.
The king of the chamois stood stone still, the white butterfly on the tip of his left horn.
Man was good at foreseeing, juxtaposing the future reshuffling senses with hypothesis, the favourite game. But man is blind to time present, understands nothing of it. The present now was The King above him.
The man got to the King, the herd was still near, looking. The victory you long for most is the twin of a defeat never experienced before. He disparaged the instinct which had aligned the shot.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
New Mexico Poetry Review.
I have just received the news that New Mexico Poetry Review has accepted one of my poems that will be published in Spring 2010 and they will send a copy of the magazine.
This is extraordinary news for me, usually I don't report acceptances in this blog if not for some particular reason. In this case it's the first time ever that my work is accepted by a US journal named after a US state. In ten years time I have submitted, often more than once, to Colorado Review, Connecticut Review, Connecticut Poetry Review, Texas Review, Indiana Review, Florida Review, North Carolina Review, North Dakota Review, Ohio Review and so on. In vain.
But maybe there is always a first time, and when you least think about it.
(And, well, yes, also a last, later, no matter what you think).
This is extraordinary news for me, usually I don't report acceptances in this blog if not for some particular reason. In this case it's the first time ever that my work is accepted by a US journal named after a US state. In ten years time I have submitted, often more than once, to Colorado Review, Connecticut Review, Connecticut Poetry Review, Texas Review, Indiana Review, Florida Review, North Carolina Review, North Dakota Review, Ohio Review and so on. In vain.
But maybe there is always a first time, and when you least think about it.
(And, well, yes, also a last, later, no matter what you think).
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Lampedusa
I found this in the guidelines of the Canadian magazine "Descant":
(ii) Sicily (deadline: June 01, 2010)
Sicily … perhaps no other island conjures up such vivid images as the ancient island of Sicily. What comes to mind? Romantic idyll or land of feuding rivalries? The mafia? An island apart from mainstream Italian culture? What is your Sicily? Does every culture have its own Sicily — its own outsiders living within its midst? Explode the stereotypes and delve into a modern reality of what Sicily represents for you as a writer. Descant is requesting submissions of unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, photography and previously unpublished works of translation from the Sicilian.
I remember that for various reasons the first subjects of my poetry before 1993, when I still wrote in Italian, were the land of Sicily, its natural setting and countryside. But I have destroyed all the poems in Italian and never tried to translate them into English. I passed through Sicily going to Lampedusa by train!! from Venice. It took me two days and two nights, the first night on the train and the second on the ship from Porto Empedocle to Lampedusa. I still remember the marvellous sunburnt, brown and yellow landscape when I crossed Sicily by train, the central part of it from Termini Imerese to Agrigento...it was July, there was no air conditioning on that train, we were in the 80's and only a few trains had air conditioning, but all the same it was less hot inside the train than outside so I remember we had to close the window to protect us from the burning middle afternoon air...
Lampedusa has become dramatically famous in these years for the arrival of boats of Black Africans, refugees, actually for the Non-Arrival of many of them who were trying to get there and drowned and for the forced turning back of others by our navy under the orders of my narrow-minded, squalid and racist government, also against European and sea-laws.
But at that time, in the 80's, the only Black fellow I saw in Lampedusa was a soldier, an Afro-American from the US settled on the island to check Gadaffi's moves who looked very keen on bringing havoc in Europe.
I was mesmerized by Lampedusa, the hot blankness of its almost desert interior, and the rocky steep coasts and cliffs with the white, sparkling tropical-like sand of the Isola dei Conigli.
Many years later, four-five years ago, I wrote a poem in English about the island which I can't unfortunately submit to Descant because it is already published. I enclose it here.
LAMPEDUSA
Praise sirocco again
despite all the tiredness it brings
when the sea is an open throat
and perspiration streams
and the waves’ arms grind swarms.
When it comes, this haze like blinding ash,
it settles at once, the slow thick surf
spreading and sinking the heart.
Hear the burying desire of the desert
and the heat’s gaze, the loitering in eyes
of bottomless pomegranate seeds.
Remember the tall skinny dogs
standing up slowly and walking along
and lying back down, whole bodies stretched
on the broken stones of the pavement
of a Sicilian island street, in the heat
of the noon sun and the strip
of an ink shadow of a yellow wall
where chinks and cracks reminded
of simple exhaustion and eternity.
There we bought rolls of rice and anchovies
while sirocco was blowing its huge
sheets from Africa, the multifarious wings
brought to earth, in scratching
blades of light, delivered
by the ever pregnant sea.
(ii) Sicily (deadline: June 01, 2010)
Sicily … perhaps no other island conjures up such vivid images as the ancient island of Sicily. What comes to mind? Romantic idyll or land of feuding rivalries? The mafia? An island apart from mainstream Italian culture? What is your Sicily? Does every culture have its own Sicily — its own outsiders living within its midst? Explode the stereotypes and delve into a modern reality of what Sicily represents for you as a writer. Descant is requesting submissions of unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, photography and previously unpublished works of translation from the Sicilian.
I remember that for various reasons the first subjects of my poetry before 1993, when I still wrote in Italian, were the land of Sicily, its natural setting and countryside. But I have destroyed all the poems in Italian and never tried to translate them into English. I passed through Sicily going to Lampedusa by train!! from Venice. It took me two days and two nights, the first night on the train and the second on the ship from Porto Empedocle to Lampedusa. I still remember the marvellous sunburnt, brown and yellow landscape when I crossed Sicily by train, the central part of it from Termini Imerese to Agrigento...it was July, there was no air conditioning on that train, we were in the 80's and only a few trains had air conditioning, but all the same it was less hot inside the train than outside so I remember we had to close the window to protect us from the burning middle afternoon air...
Lampedusa has become dramatically famous in these years for the arrival of boats of Black Africans, refugees, actually for the Non-Arrival of many of them who were trying to get there and drowned and for the forced turning back of others by our navy under the orders of my narrow-minded, squalid and racist government, also against European and sea-laws.
But at that time, in the 80's, the only Black fellow I saw in Lampedusa was a soldier, an Afro-American from the US settled on the island to check Gadaffi's moves who looked very keen on bringing havoc in Europe.
I was mesmerized by Lampedusa, the hot blankness of its almost desert interior, and the rocky steep coasts and cliffs with the white, sparkling tropical-like sand of the Isola dei Conigli.
Many years later, four-five years ago, I wrote a poem in English about the island which I can't unfortunately submit to Descant because it is already published. I enclose it here.
LAMPEDUSA
Praise sirocco again
despite all the tiredness it brings
when the sea is an open throat
and perspiration streams
and the waves’ arms grind swarms.
When it comes, this haze like blinding ash,
it settles at once, the slow thick surf
spreading and sinking the heart.
Hear the burying desire of the desert
and the heat’s gaze, the loitering in eyes
of bottomless pomegranate seeds.
Remember the tall skinny dogs
standing up slowly and walking along
and lying back down, whole bodies stretched
on the broken stones of the pavement
of a Sicilian island street, in the heat
of the noon sun and the strip
of an ink shadow of a yellow wall
where chinks and cracks reminded
of simple exhaustion and eternity.
There we bought rolls of rice and anchovies
while sirocco was blowing its huge
sheets from Africa, the multifarious wings
brought to earth, in scratching
blades of light, delivered
by the ever pregnant sea.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Half Smile
I continue to think about an older post in Elisabeth's blog http://sixthinline.blogspot.com/ entitled " Write what comes up for you", October 25, in which some alluring suggestions are underlined for writers. I am thinking in particular about those two saying that it's better to write about old things, things happened ten years ago!, and things you wouldn't tell anybody, -I understand: things you are almost ashamed of, or scared by, or, in an hidden way, shocked by.
So I think you need to make a big effort to start writing of this and you need a particular sort of energy.
But I think that if you try hard to write about what "you would never tell anybody" of your distant past you have a chance only if that old spark lets himself be unveiled. In other words you must also be "allowed" by a force outside you to write something that "you would never tell anybody" and turn it into something you would at once tell everybody.
I have written a number of poems exploring my distant past, often at the start there was just an image that kept flashing in the mind as in this case a heavy log we "transported" into a ground floor single room where I was living, making it roll first on the sand then on the pavement for two-three kilometers. This image found its way almost at once into the connection with another, more recent, not of ten years before but ten days: myself ringing a bell, looking for a friend...
HALF SMILE
You haven’t stopped looking for the chance,
the same of that other age when in the morning
you left home with nothing to do,
a whole day ahead like an empty beach
when you could easily end up drifting along
feeling just lonely and bored.
It was the time when things couldn’t decide
whether to straddle or tiptoe
and steps wanted to be flavoured
while you tried the tune of a half smile
and the appropriate aplomb.
You rang that bell many times in vain
but never gave up hope.
And there was always a day
when you found them all in and they ran down
and left with you towards the beach,
then it was all talks, plans, wind and dunes,
the day stretched with the future,
a busy dog hurrying along sniffing driftwood.
One evening in the twilight
you found a heavy stump of a tree,
large and massive in the wet sand,
with green mould shining on burnt knuckles of bark,
the gorgeous cheekbones of chance.
Dirty, almost useless but you liked it
and everybody helped you bring it home.
That night you looked at it for a long time
savouring accomplishment in the smell of its salt.
Now you have again
just rung the bell. You have rung it,
no matter all the time that’s passed,
no matter it’s almost certain nobody will answer,
you have rung and are waiting
with inside the sea roar and the same bright
sting of a half smile.
So I think you need to make a big effort to start writing of this and you need a particular sort of energy.
But I think that if you try hard to write about what "you would never tell anybody" of your distant past you have a chance only if that old spark lets himself be unveiled. In other words you must also be "allowed" by a force outside you to write something that "you would never tell anybody" and turn it into something you would at once tell everybody.
I have written a number of poems exploring my distant past, often at the start there was just an image that kept flashing in the mind as in this case a heavy log we "transported" into a ground floor single room where I was living, making it roll first on the sand then on the pavement for two-three kilometers. This image found its way almost at once into the connection with another, more recent, not of ten years before but ten days: myself ringing a bell, looking for a friend...
HALF SMILE
You haven’t stopped looking for the chance,
the same of that other age when in the morning
you left home with nothing to do,
a whole day ahead like an empty beach
when you could easily end up drifting along
feeling just lonely and bored.
It was the time when things couldn’t decide
whether to straddle or tiptoe
and steps wanted to be flavoured
while you tried the tune of a half smile
and the appropriate aplomb.
You rang that bell many times in vain
but never gave up hope.
And there was always a day
when you found them all in and they ran down
and left with you towards the beach,
then it was all talks, plans, wind and dunes,
the day stretched with the future,
a busy dog hurrying along sniffing driftwood.
One evening in the twilight
you found a heavy stump of a tree,
large and massive in the wet sand,
with green mould shining on burnt knuckles of bark,
the gorgeous cheekbones of chance.
Dirty, almost useless but you liked it
and everybody helped you bring it home.
That night you looked at it for a long time
savouring accomplishment in the smell of its salt.
Now you have again
just rung the bell. You have rung it,
no matter all the time that’s passed,
no matter it’s almost certain nobody will answer,
you have rung and are waiting
with inside the sea roar and the same bright
sting of a half smile.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
"Re-reading", "Re-understanding" (or not) poetry. An enquiry.
I have tried to write something about these famous lines from Four Quartets, in this blog, for two or three times and have cancelled the post. Now I try again:
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
These lines are part of a tremendously intense, as well as obscure in some points ( also according to Helen Gardner in "The Art of T.S.Eliot" )poetic and religious speculation on the passing and persisting of time, in the first of Four Quartets "Burnt Norton". These lines have fascinated me for years and nevertheless I am never sure to have "understood" them completely even after reading various comments and interpretations. So let's see what you in the blogsphere think:
What exactly points to one end which is always present?
What has been has passed, what might have been has never been. If I think rationally this affirmation marks something impossible, maybe absurd. But I "feel" all the same its "truth". Poetry allures us because it goes beyond rationality and all that is considered just logic. So what is this "one end", "always present" so charged with this mystical power of welcoming the impossible making it sound "true"?
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
These lines are part of a tremendously intense, as well as obscure in some points ( also according to Helen Gardner in "The Art of T.S.Eliot" )poetic and religious speculation on the passing and persisting of time, in the first of Four Quartets "Burnt Norton". These lines have fascinated me for years and nevertheless I am never sure to have "understood" them completely even after reading various comments and interpretations. So let's see what you in the blogsphere think:
What exactly points to one end which is always present?
What has been has passed, what might have been has never been. If I think rationally this affirmation marks something impossible, maybe absurd. But I "feel" all the same its "truth". Poetry allures us because it goes beyond rationality and all that is considered just logic. So what is this "one end", "always present" so charged with this mystical power of welcoming the impossible making it sound "true"?
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Kingfisher
At the still point of the turning world.
From time to time Eliot's poetry fills me, in recurrent waves. Like on that day when, strangely enough I suppose, I sighted a kingfisher by the sea on the stones of a causeway on the beach. The poem I enclose here was published in the British print magazine "Dream Catcher 18, 2006".
KINGFISHER
The day was calm, the sea still like a salt marsh.
Everything still, its short perched body still
on the tip of a stone along the dam,
a cluster of still dots around the blue back,
the orange breast and the long beak.
Just before spotting it you had been stopped
by stillness itself, sand and air
in their absolutely settled vast velvet.
One step closer and it flew off
skimming the water-skin, a silent
straight line of fast beating wings.
All sounds were muffled
in this day of low, glowing haze,
so you could say it was in the air
the praised pace of those lines
-At the still point of the turning world…-
with the simple shiver of a truth beyond words.
No wing then answered light to light,
the colours of its body would retain it all.
But you sensed all the same
the mute fullness that makes the world turn,
the heart of stillness where the gaze
ready for marvels just waits.
From time to time Eliot's poetry fills me, in recurrent waves. Like on that day when, strangely enough I suppose, I sighted a kingfisher by the sea on the stones of a causeway on the beach. The poem I enclose here was published in the British print magazine "Dream Catcher 18, 2006".
KINGFISHER
The day was calm, the sea still like a salt marsh.
Everything still, its short perched body still
on the tip of a stone along the dam,
a cluster of still dots around the blue back,
the orange breast and the long beak.
Just before spotting it you had been stopped
by stillness itself, sand and air
in their absolutely settled vast velvet.
One step closer and it flew off
skimming the water-skin, a silent
straight line of fast beating wings.
All sounds were muffled
in this day of low, glowing haze,
so you could say it was in the air
the praised pace of those lines
-At the still point of the turning world…-
with the simple shiver of a truth beyond words.
No wing then answered light to light,
the colours of its body would retain it all.
But you sensed all the same
the mute fullness that makes the world turn,
the heart of stillness where the gaze
ready for marvels just waits.
Monday, October 26, 2009
October, autumn and closeness
Barbara Smith http://intendednot2b.blogspot.com/ has reawakened in me, in her latest post, the "sense" of autumn , a season I feel "inevitably" close to me. Being "close" to things and things being close to you in their particular slant of lowering light, that brings you close to the earth, to the soil, to the red-brown mud, to the reddening "coagulating" red of the end of the light -all this is very autumnal and probably more familiar in its closeness than the "distances" of azure spring skies and their spreading fingers of light so heady in newness...
I have written many poems set in an autumnal taste and texture, the one I enclose here was published in the Fall 2005 in the US print magazine "River Oak Review".
OCTOBER
Dark-blue grapes, the rows of vines,
sky trimmed with cells of earth’s blood.
And stubble on brown-red clay,
sodden and glittering by the river’s run.
The field sunken and steady and straight.
And the slanted afternoon sun, the shadow-line
beaming on the hills’ ruffled old grass.
Red wine, its froth shimmering inside the smudged
shiny barrel, in the cellar echoing steps,
hoards of whispers in beams and plaster.
And mushrooms around tree trunks,
displayed stares, veins of inner plains,
trails of just uncovered hearts.
The wet turf looking always so glossy
with its focused ochre and black universe crumbs,
with horses stamping, eyes entering, drinking ours.
And the elm and the oak, home deep down
breathing upward, steady and tense.
And a gallery of rusty-yellow webbed plane leaves,
large whispers shuffling pregnant with sky seeds.
Then a first fire
crackling, quiet, orange fingers
spread into dusk,
and chestnuts burnt on the edges,
our nether heaven
fierce in the coming dark.
I have written many poems set in an autumnal taste and texture, the one I enclose here was published in the Fall 2005 in the US print magazine "River Oak Review".
OCTOBER
Dark-blue grapes, the rows of vines,
sky trimmed with cells of earth’s blood.
And stubble on brown-red clay,
sodden and glittering by the river’s run.
The field sunken and steady and straight.
And the slanted afternoon sun, the shadow-line
beaming on the hills’ ruffled old grass.
Red wine, its froth shimmering inside the smudged
shiny barrel, in the cellar echoing steps,
hoards of whispers in beams and plaster.
And mushrooms around tree trunks,
displayed stares, veins of inner plains,
trails of just uncovered hearts.
The wet turf looking always so glossy
with its focused ochre and black universe crumbs,
with horses stamping, eyes entering, drinking ours.
And the elm and the oak, home deep down
breathing upward, steady and tense.
And a gallery of rusty-yellow webbed plane leaves,
large whispers shuffling pregnant with sky seeds.
Then a first fire
crackling, quiet, orange fingers
spread into dusk,
and chestnuts burnt on the edges,
our nether heaven
fierce in the coming dark.
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