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Beati Costruttori di Incertezze a Pitigliano
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(420 Café, Amsterdam, September 27-28, 2006)-The first day of the Quarto Festival Internazionale della Letteratura Resistente reached its early peak when John Giorno performed works from his new book, The Wisdom of the Witches ("La saggezza delle streghe") at the Libri di Stampa Alternativa in Pitigliano, with translations by Domenico Bracale. Giorno is one of America's greatest living poets and perhaps its most outstanding performer, and his new book of verse in American and Italian is a stunning work of poetic composition.
The little Tuscan village of Pitigliano, called the "City of Tufo" in honor of the local stone from which the community has been constructed, is perched high atop a cliff of tufo and appears from a distance to have been carved out of the cliff itself. Magazzino Giustacori, the Libri (bookstore) di Stampa Alternativa, is a cozy shop on the via Zuccarelli that is completely stocked with the myriad publications of Stampa Alternativa, and most of the festival readings and performances take place in this tiny space, although at night they move a few miles down the road to the stage erected at a former schoolhouse at Elmo. That's where Mark Ritsema and I will perform later this evening in celebration of the publication of my book Va Tutto Bene / It's All Good by Stampa Alternativa.
Mark and I and John Giorno and Domenico Bracale and his companion have been stashed for the weekend in a sweet little bed & breakfast (La Pittolo) outside of Elmo owned & operated by a cat named Fabio, who fled city life a couple of years ago, bought this place in the countryside three hours north of Rome, renovated it and now runs it himself in a very relaxed yet thorough way.
It's a great delight to spend this time in Tuscany with Giorno, one of my heroes of poetry and a truly great American who invented the Dial-A-Poem Poets and Giorno Poetry System recordings, of which he has released 40 albums. I had the honor of appearing on the first double-LP Dial-A-Poem Poets album many years ago when I was in prison, and the one time I had the opportunity to witness Giorno in performance was a pivotal point in my development as a performer.
Giorno was a guest of George Tysh's terrific poetry series at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the mid-1980s and presented one of the most exciting performances I've ever seen. Of poets only my beloved friend and mentor Amiri Baraka is in the same league on stage. What amazed me most was that Giorno delivered his texts without referring to a manuscript. His works swung with incredible power, and he was able to connect directly with the people in his audience without the distance of a sheet of paper between them. The poems were spectacular, and Giorno's delivery was even more supersonic.
Me, I grew up under the tyranny of the printed page. Of course it was important to deliver the verses in public in the bardic tradition of oral poetry, but the way I came up-under Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg and their ilk-strict and precise adherence to the composed text was mandatory, and when one saw a poet delivering verse without a text, it was generally just about the corniest thing you could ever imagine.
But Giorno blew that away for me, and before long I found myself on stage reciting familiar poems of my own without reference to a text-I had performed them often enough to have learned them "by heart," as they say, and like I had seen with Giorno, it created a whole new dynamic with my audiences, who were following what I was saying in my verses as if it were being spoken in conversation and not something read from a text. I've since followed this course as well as I am able, and I can do about two entire sets of my verse in concert without texts.
I learned this from John Giorno, and I can't tell you how happy I was to have the opportunity to thank him for this important gift. And then to hear him perform his new works in the most intimate of settings, with Domenico offering Italian translations so the audience could understand what was being said by the poet when it was his turn-this was an exciting evening of poetry indeed.
That night Mark & I got to perform at the former schoolhouse, now a local cultural center, in the tiny tiny village of Elmo. There were elongated introductions by Marcello Baraghini, celebrating 35 years as Italy's leading avant-garde publisher; a really long one by Matteo Guarnaccia, my treasured friend and big-time facilitator from Milano; and a few words from my Italian translator, Alberto Prunetti. Mark & I tried to stick to the poems in the book but managed to throw in a couple of extra numbers from our forthcoming CD release, Criss Cross. My man Vito of the internet radio program Who Do You Think You Are? made a recording of our set, and I'll play it on my radio show one of these weeks.
Speaking of the radio show, the next afternoon Mark & Giorno and I got together with Vito between sets at the bookstore and cut a "Joint Production" for Radio Free Amsterdam and Vito's own show, which is now being broadcast from Cambridge, England where Vita is attending college. You can hear it at http://vitolaterza.blogspot.com, and our program from Pitigliano was podcast last week as the John Sinclair Show #104. Here's the link:
John Sinclair Show #104 (.mp3)
We went back to the schoolyard at Elmo that night for the big anniversary party and had a ball hanging out and listening to the panorama of musical styles presented by the band called Noi Nati Male [We Were Born Bad] & Partners. Quarto Festival Internazionale della Letteratura Resistente: Beati Costruttori di Incertezze a Pitigliano e ad Elmo di Sorano was coming to an end: "Senza sponsor, non si paga, non si prenota" (roughly: Without sponsors, or tickets, or backstage passes").
Also performing at the festival this weekend were Matteo Guarnaccia, reading from his new work "Almanacco della Pace: Donne e uomini, storie, miti, simboli che hanno offerto una possibilita alla pace"; Giovanni Feo, author of the Geografia sacra-"il culto della madre terra dalla preistoria agliu etruschi"; Andrea Sechi (Celtic harp) with Anita Foerster (percussion); Luciana Bellini e Il Fondo of "Detti e ridetti-Grammatica popolare"; Irene Blundo, with Antonelli Ricci and Corrado Barontini, "Bianciardi com'era a Grosseto-Intervista con Isata Vitali"; Sara Donzelli reciting "La regina dei banditi-Vita e morte di Phoolan Devi" by Federico Bertozzi "per la regia di Giorgio Zorcu"; and Maila Lo Guidice, reading from "Nucleo Accumbens." These are all Stampa Alternativa authors and musicians.
The Stampa Alternativa website is at
www.stampalternativa.it
Latest Comments (2)
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Hi from James (reply)
Sep 30, 2006 15:23 EST by semarkj
Hey John --
It's alsways great and inspiring to hear about your Italian connections. I can't wait to get on the links you put out there.
I spoke with Leni a couple days ago & got filled in on the family. I'm still grounded until the end of October but after that, I'll be back to normal I hope.
Yours,
James
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BritaBee says Ciao! (reply)
Sep 29, 2006 20:09 EST by britabee
So exciting to hear you are in Italy- my best girlfriend and her husband live there- Suzanne and Nico! I am glad things are well!
Speaking of Improvisation and reading from memory in a performance- I just had a great session with Lyman Woodard who came to talk to my class of kids at Wayne State about Jazz and stuff! I have them designing a Jazz cafe- so Lyman came in as a guest speaker! I... show all
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