About me

Like many poets I'm fundamentally a lonely man. But at a certain time of his life, a poet needs to share   knowledge and experiences with other poets. This time has come for me. I've been spending most of my fifty five years searching the reasons why we are living here, on this earth, just in this space-time, sometimes feeling like trapped in my body, and in order to focus better my thoughts I started writing down my emotions. That's why I discovered myself as a poet. Now I want to understand what is a poet for.

I think a poet is a man who asks himself some questions and tries to answer them for  the benefit of other people,  beyond his own's horizons.

 A poet is a mediator between God and man (or between Nature and man, we can say after Wordsworth, if we don't want to be involved with such a n engaging matter as God). I see the poet partly  as a prophet and partly  as a witness  of his time.  Of course a poet is a man like the others. As such he feels  his own emotions and deals diary with love, pain, sorrow, joyfulness (only some days are for joy, unfortunately).

But the poet is also an artist, which makes the difference. As any artist the poet utilises special tools to build up the handicrafts of his art. These tools, for the poet, are the form's devices, the meter, the rhyme, the rhythm and, of course, the words. The more he knows how to use these tools, the more the poet can hit answering in a fashioned form those funding questions which are essential part of the role he has to play in the society. It's worthless to add that the use of technical instruments  is supposed to improve the result in terms of emotion and pleasure the reader expects to receive from poetry.

My poetic production can be divided in two main parts: the first one is made of  something like seventy poems written in free verses  along thirty years, from 1976 to  2006. It is a mixing of sad, spiritual and love poems.

The second part, more conspicuous than the first, starts on 1996 when my father, before dying, gave to me a late seventeenth’s  manuscript fragments from an ancient, our Sicilian ascendant.

Developing and studying upon these fragments I find out that the original manuscript formerly contained,  on blank and rhymed verses,  56 Cantos including 73 books of the Holy Bible and  nineteen apocryphal books.

Until now I have succeeded in rebuilding all the Cantos regarding the Old Testament (which form the Poem of Creation, partly already edited) and the four Gospel with ten apocryphal which have been transfused in a novel, set in the sixteenth century with the title of “Four voices, one story”, still to be published.

This second part of my poetic work presents a varied metric range going from  ottava rima in decasyllables to  terza rima also of decasyllables passing through quatrains of seven syllables and some other classical metric forms mostly from Petrarch's devices such as Ballatas, Canzones and even Sonnets.

Being a husband, a father, a teacher and a lawyer, I have been composing  all this during night time and in my free summer time (when not reading some good lectures, which I know plenty).

 My revision process regards above all the translation of my works in to English language.

 It's quite hard and I don’t think I will be able to translate the entire Poem of Creation respecting the  accents and the rhymes the Cantos have in the original Italian form.

At the moment I succeeded in translating the First Canto (you can read part of it, if you find the  time to do it, both in my blog http://poetryandmore-albixforpoetry.blogspot.com/ and in my personal web page at www.neopoet.com. )

I would like to publish   this first Canto and some of my best poems in a book to be titled "Living Witness" A tribute for a New Romantic Poetry.  

A Manifesto for a new Magazine

Ars Poetica Magazine is a new literary review for classic and modern poetry, edited both in english and italian languages. 

The first number will be issued very soon. The magazine won'nt follow a regular,   periodic publication but it will be issued as we need. 

The name of the Magazine has been chosen thinkink at the contents of  the Horace's work (also known as the Epistle to Piso) incredibly pungent and present after more than 2000 years.  

The work attracted the attention of Giacomo Leopardi who made i , in 1811 , a fine octave transposition in rhyme. 

 Our references will so swing between these two great poets: Horace and Leopardi.

This does not mean that our magazine won't take in the right count other great poets like Dante, Tasso, Ariosto or Manzoni; neither we aim to slide over the greatness of such a literary giants as Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Byron or Dickinson. But the two orienting poles will be the latin poet from Venosa and

the great recanatian author of the "Infinito" and of the transposition of the horacian  "Ars Poetica".

Nowdays there are so many poets writing so many poems so much long! And all seems to be so easy!

That's due to the general literacy which took place in the last century and there is nothing bad on it.

Nevertheless there is a precious heritage of poetic culture which is on risk to be lost.

Words are  like  rough stones: before they become verses or poetry, they need to be smoothed like river's stones.

Horace uses a more efficient metaphore in his epistole to Piso:" If you want to deserve altars or temples / wait at least nine years, dear brother / before to publish your poems/and work on them as blacksmith does to make the iron shape!!! " And forward in the poem: " But if you are in  search of  honor and praise / writing four verses, oh Piso  / show them to your  parents or to a wise and good censor ;/ keep them locked up for a long time / for if a man has once ever escaped/  he's not  coming back never indeed ! "

 Of great poets of the past I appreciate their skill on shortness and synthesis. A skill that does not belong to free versifiers of present days. and neither they seem to shine for rhyming. Again with the Horace's words:

" Meanwhile, everyone is kindly asked to be short  / and either delight or to be useful in his rhymes! "

Of course I don't have nothing against blank verses or free versifiers; but I think that poetry has paid a price for the democrat diffusion of popular literacy. The quantity gained by poetry in width has been lost in depth.

So many writers confuse poetry and prose misregarding of any distinction. So, some writers, who could be so cool in prose,, become, with Horace's words, cruel poets:

" We can tolerate mediocrity in anything ;/ but not in  poetry: thus in honey /  choosey mouths do not like   / a bitter almond  inside . / The best would be to write on prose / if a versifier  is just too cruel / as the football player leaves balloon and balls / and  abandon the disc who is not too strong!

Metric patterns and poetic structures are not cages for prisoners but frames which bound to freedom and liberty is not equal to anarchy.

Poetry is nourishment for the souls and souls need only distilled food.

But whom readers does our Magazine apply to?

First of all we would like to recall those who love  poetry metrical structures (both poets or just readers); a poetry framed into patterns like terza rima, octaves and whatelse is made by syllables with the right accents.

Secondly our Magazine would like to approach the  Italian who live abroad (specially those who live in English speaking countries but not only them); either because they have emigrated or they live in foreign countries for different reasons; 

Finally everyone who wants to have a free change of ideas, even with those who might have different points sf view, are welcome for reading, commenting or contributing to our Magazine.

We'll give information of the web site publishing the contents of Ars Poetica Magazine, as soon as we are ready for publication.

I hope you'll be joining us for sharing time and ideas together. In the meantime, I wish all the best on your life.