last moon

Visualizzazione post con etichetta rhymes. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta rhymes. Mostra tutti i post

giovedì 6 novembre 2014

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.  

domenica 16 febbraio 2014

Poem of Creation



Prologue
I sing  the God Almighty’s  Creation
Whereof were firstly born Adam and Eve
former seed of any human Nation
at the time  they could only   conceive
 the joyfulness with no desperation
In the Eden still so far to misgive
The challenge of that infernal snake
Who wanted to be a godlike fake !

I also sing  about the  brave men strays,
  Straight descendants of that chosen race,
who  such in boldly and daring ways
     Isr’eli  people to holy surface
  They lead of  Palestine.  Hates, loves, betray’ls,
     I don't omit, on fortune and disgrace:
  those between God and men, tribes and kingdoms ;
And  I sing  laws, exiles, wars, in my  songs.

Arduous so much however it ‘s my part,
long and full of traps my composition,
That plenty of fear I feel into my heart,
  if I dare to see myself on action,
and tremble  with my head before I start
The Old and the New Holy Narration!
My Fairy God, Firmament’s Creator
Please make me such an able narrator!

From   Genesis’ to Apocalypse’s book
please drive my hand among rhymes and accents  
 to enable me to understand and hook   
the most significant , deep sentiments
in order they can take a fairly look   
of  those seventy three, pious components!
If someone goes to Source for sweeter  taste
  surely my efforts I will not waste!


First Canto
From the Book of Genesis
I

As beginning God created the sky

 And the earth, which was shapeless and desert

And   darkness cover’d the abysses close by;

but on the waters, with divine, expert  

zeal, God established that the obscurity

had to be opened to the bright alert!

 God, seeing that it was good, called Day the light.

and the darkness, instead, was named Night. 


Then beneath the waters, the firmament

sett God, and between them, b’low, the dry land

He also set, whither at same moment,  

 to any bud and   tree He gave command

from seed, to be produc’d for nourishment

of any species, in ground, soil or sand!

After He had named sky, earth and sea

To following duty God had to begin. 


 Hereafter the lights in the sky He set

doing the moon and ‘sun for night and day,

And others signs and stars in dose correct,

for making years and seasons going away,

Because The Most High is more than Perfect

and furthermore of this I cannot say !

About this seventh stanza therefore

I will not tell you nothing anymore!

…to be continued…

Verses by Ignazio Salvatore Basile

studio.basile@tiscali.it

giovedì 24 ottobre 2013

Ars Poetica

The Ars Poetica of Horace is incredibly pungent and present even though more than 2000 years have passed since the great Latin poet wrote this work, also known as the Epistle to Piso . The work attracted the attention of Giacomo Leopardi who made i , in 1811 , a fine octave transposition in rhyme.
Here are some pearls in all faithful to the original that inspired them .
" 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!!! "
" Meanwhile, everyone is kindly asked to be short  / and either delight or to be useful in his rhymes! "
" 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 ! "
" 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  ! "
Let us meditate on these verses together, all of us who want to be poets !