Stroll in Rome

I simply love walking around the city center and, as much as I know it well, it seems there is always something I haven't seen or noticed. Literally every corner hides a surprise. Here below are a few pictures I took after my stroll yesterday. Things old and new. Things I knew and things I have learnt. I hope you will enjoy the photos.

Piazza Costaguti

Piazza  Costaguti - The Building where poet P.P. Pasolini lived shortly

Roman poet G.G. Belli was born here

Church of St. Eustace


Poet Aldo Palazzeschi lived here

Decorated building

Madonnella & Arco della Ciambella

Teatro Marcello 
Heading to the Tiberina Island

Broken bridge


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

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

Rilke's Angel

Image
I am in Rilke state of mind today. As a translator and writing poems mainly in English myself, I am always fascinated by Rilke's skilful use of language in his French poems--considering the fact that he was Bohemian-Austrian--but even more by his powerful depictions. The one I love most is perhaps his Angel in the poem "An Angel At My Table". A visionary yet rustic presence whose invisible traits linger in me after each single reading. The physical description is missing, but one has the impression of truly seeing the winged creature. Enjoy Rilke's wonderful piece of bravura (not lost in translation)! Stay still, if suddenly the Angel decides to appear at your table; smooth out the creases in the tablecloth under your bread. Offer him to take a turn at tasting your crude fare, to take a turn lifting to his pure lips a simple glass of everyday life.
Read more