Writing to the Poet about "Howl" and Other Things

I have spent the past two weeks writing about the end of the Fifties and reading an incredible amount of correspondence by the Poet dating to those years. I truly love letters. They tell us so much about who writes them. They are so vibrant, full of enthusiasm and the closest thing I know to real life. I always have the impression I am there myself. Re-living whatever happened. Conversing amiably with Beat poets and many others.

I must also find answers to doubts, though. Sometimes I just feel like I have a huge jig-saw puzzle to complete and, when things do not match, I return to the Poet. This morning I had to write to him a long e-mail dealing with his Dartmouth years, his Mayakovsky translations, meeting Allen Ginsberg, an amazing reading of "Howl" by Jack Gilbert and an argument with Robert Creeley.

I am looking forward to moving forward. Even if my "forward" is not literal. I have already written a huge amount of the Poets' life in the Sixties and Seventies. Truth is I feel this bio will have a jazzy feel. The outline is there, but I end up writing about what interest me most at a given moment. Rhythm is important, but improvisation matters!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visceral Anne Sexton

Image
I love visceral poets. I love poetry made of flesh and bones, of marrow and heart. And pain. I was seventeen when I first read a poem by Anne Sexton. It was love at first sight. I could not help reading all she wrote from then onward and being so devastated by her words and life. I still retain the magical power with which a sentence of that poem hit me: "My mouth blooms like a cut." If only my verses could be as powerful as this! Anne remains a spirit guide.
Read more

Wearing Poetry

Image
Yes, I proudly wear poetry. Every time I watch my ring I rejoice because those lines were written for me and no one else owns a more precious jewel. It is not the silver that makes it precious, but the beauty of the words that were chiseled on it. More so, it is the meaning of those six lines--that are the final stanza of a longer poem--that move me and remind me how incredible fortunate I am. Nothing like those words. They burn in me like an inextinguishable fire every day.  
Read more

Recalling Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Force of the Past

Image
Today is Pasolini's 36th death anniversary. He was brutally killed on the night of November 2, 1975 in still unclear circumstances and found the following morning by a blue collar on his way to work. Pasolini is possibly Italy's most important poet after Dante. An amazing intellectual who truly loved the lowest classes, which he celebrated in his deeply profound novels and poems. As Jack Hirschman points out, his three initials stand for "Passion, Provocation and Prophecy." This is so true.  I wish to celebrate Pasolini posting Orson Welles' reading one of his poems of which I am also including a translation. "I am a Force of the Past" roars Pasolini. No, he is much more than that. He is still today a Force of the Present and of the Future too.  I am a Force of the Past. My love lies only in tradition. I come from the ruins, the churches, the altarpieces, the villages abandoned in the Appenines or foothills of the Alps where my brothers once l
Read more