Poetry Rules

Yes. I will confess it. I am busy working on Jack's bio, but I have also started writing a new poetry collection. I had lunch with my fellow poet and friend Marco last Friday and we ended up talking about Pasolini. Then, after lunch and on my way home, I could not help stopping by one of my favorite spots here in Rome. And, I found myself treading in Pasolini's very footsteps. One of his poems kept resonating in my head. The place is so amazingly inspiring, that I ended up sitting on a bench on the lawn in the shade. I had my pad with me and, as I sat there, a 3 years old boy and a blackbird inspired a line. I wrote it down. It is a powerful line.

Patti is not just a wonderful rocker, an engaged artist, an activist and a rebel, but she is also a talented wordsmith. These are just a few reasons for which I admire her. At her last concert here in Rome, in the Summer of 2010, it was a pleasant surprise to discover how much she loved Pasolini's works and how she had felt compelled to visit the place where he had been murdered. Her autobiographical book "Just Kids" is a great ride. But, her poems--permeated with her love for William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud--blow me away every time I read them. Her words have the power to scratch my soul. I welcome the bleeding. THE WRITER'S SONG I did not wish to work I did not wish to earn but to curl with my jar in the sweet sorghum I laid my mat among the reeds I could hear the freeman call oh my life what does it matter will the reed cease bending with the leper turn I had a horn I did not blow I had a sake and another I could hear the freeman drunk with sky w...

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...