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    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    The delicate hour of the birds among the branches – Poems by Melih Cevdet Anday (trans. Neil P. Doherty)

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A flock of cardinals melted in the scarlet sky: Poems by Daryna Gladun

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    The wolf hour and other poems by Ella Yevtushenko

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Testing the worth of poetic bombshells – Four poems by Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

  • Fiction
    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    The Naked Shell of Aloneness – Kazi Rafi

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    The Shadow of a Shadow – Nandini Sahu

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Football is Life – Mojaffor Hossein

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

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    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

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    Take Note of the Sun Shining Within Twilight – Four Poems by Natalia Beltchenko

    BOW / BHUK – Parimal Bhattacharya

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    My Lover, My Body – Gonca Özmen, trans. by Neil P. Doherty

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    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

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    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

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    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of romantic love and its perils: The lyrics of the enigmatic Barbara Strozzi – Luciana Messina

  • Interviews & reviews
    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Paradoxes of misfits and wanderers: Modhura Bandyopadhyay reviews Stalks of Lotus

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Beauty and Defiance: Ukrainian contemporary paintings in Padua- Show organizer Liudmila Vladova Olenovych in conversation with Camilla Boemio

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    A preview of Greek poet Tsabika Hatzinikola’s second collection “Without Presence, Dreams Do Not Emerge”, by Georg Schaaf

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Ascension: A conversation with Matthew Smith

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Of Concentric Storytelling, Footballs and the Shifting World

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

    Lexically Sugared Circuits of R/elation: A Conversation with Adeena Karasick

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    Camilla Boemio interviews Malaysian artist Kim Ng

    Poetic bridges and conversations: Icelandic, Kiswahili and English through three poems by Hlín Leifsdóttir

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Human Bestiary Series – Five Poems by Pina Piccolo

    Bear encounters in Italy:  Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Bear encounters in Italy: Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Chapter four from “La cena- Avanzi dell’ex Jugoslavia”, by Božidar Stanišić

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A song of peace and other poems by Julio Monteiro Martins

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    I am the storm rattling iron door handles (Part I)- Poems by Michael D. Amitin

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Spirited away by the northern winds (Part I) – Poems by Marcello Tagliente

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Like a geological specimen in a darkened room: Two poems by Neil Davidson

  • News
    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    RUCKSACK – GLOBAL POETRY PATCHWORK PROJECT

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    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5:  Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    REFUGEE TALES July 3-5: Register for a Walk In Solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    IL BIANCO E IL NERO – LE PAROLE PER DIRLO, Conference Milan Sept. 7

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE  FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

    OPEN POEM TO THE CURATORS OF THE 58th VENICE BIENNALE FROM THE GHOSTS OF THAT RELIC YOU SHOULD NOT DARE CALL “OUR BOAT” (Pina Piccolo)

  • Home
  • Poetry
    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    The delicate hour of the birds among the branches – Poems by Melih Cevdet Anday (trans. Neil P. Doherty)

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Afro Women Poetry- SUDAN: Reem Yasir, Rajaa Bushara, Fatma Latif

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A flock of cardinals melted in the scarlet sky: Poems by Daryna Gladun

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    The wolf hour and other poems by Ella Yevtushenko

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Testing the worth of poetic bombshells – Four poems by Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

  • Fiction
    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Chapter ten, from”Come What May” by Ahmed Masoud

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    Remembering Carla Macoggi: Excerpts from “Kkeywa- Storia di una bambina meticcia” and “Nemesi della rossa”

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    The Naked Shell of Aloneness – Kazi Rafi

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    The Shadow of a Shadow – Nandini Sahu

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Football is Life – Mojaffor Hossein

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Origin – 1. The House, at night, by Predrag Finci

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    HOT MANGO CHUTNEY SAUCE – Farah Ahamed (from Period Matters)

    Take Note of the Sun Shining Within Twilight – Four Poems by Natalia Beltchenko

    BOW / BHUK – Parimal Bhattacharya

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    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    A tribute to Carla Macoggi – An invitation to reading her novels, by Jessy Simonini

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    In memoriam – Swimming in the Tigris, Greenford: The Poetical Journey of Fawzi Karim, by Marius Kociejowski

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

    What Gets Read: How the Beats Caught on in Italy – Clark Bouwman

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    Of romantic love and its perils: The lyrics of the enigmatic Barbara Strozzi – Luciana Messina

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    Paradoxes of misfits and wanderers: Modhura Bandyopadhyay reviews Stalks of Lotus

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    • Non fiction
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    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    A song of peace and other poems by Julio Monteiro Martins

    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

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    Datura – Paulami Sengupta

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    Overturning planes in the labyrinth – Four poems by Rita Degli Esposti

    Spirited away by the northern winds (Part I) – Poems by Marcello Tagliente

    Pioneer’s Portrait: How Voltaire Contributed to Comparative Literature, by Razu Alauddin    

    Like a geological specimen in a darkened room: Two poems by Neil Davidson

  • News
    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

    THE DREAMING MACHINE ISSUE N. 11 WILL BE OUT ON DEC. 10

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Home Non Fiction

The poem, like the poet, plays with itself. On Robert Krotesch’s “Seed Catalogue” – Carmelo Militano

December 2, 2018
in Non Fiction, The dreaming machine n 3
Somewhere deep inside my soul,  a tiny bone shattered – Five poems from “The Bitter Herb”, by Raphael D’Abdon
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I doubt these days there are many poets, writers, teachers, ranch-hands, or gardeners, and anyone in between who think Robert Krotesch is not an important and sophisticated poet nor someone who has made a significant contribution to Canadian letters as a writing mentor, teacher of literature, and booster of Western Canadian culture.

Hell, as all of you know, this conference is dedicated to Krotesch, and if that does suggest you are on the board with the other literary immortals-whoever they are or may be- I don’t know what does.

I am aware in writing this paper I am speaking or singing to the choir, but not too aware or self-conscious; Krotesch would be the first to point out an over abundance of self-consciousness kills good writing.

But, it is Krotesch’s playful awareness of literary tradition, (and his own ironic self awareness) where poetry and culture sit in relation to the over-all hard facts of prairie life in terms of history, geography, labour, climate, in short, the difficult business of farming, how all of this can stack up and sit in opposition to the creating of a literature or poetics that honors rural prairie life and place.

And/ or worse, there are those who see themselves as cosmopolitan and urbane and dismiss the rural voice as unsophisticated and finally there are those who accept or adopt the literary traditions of high culture and view prairie poetry as the expression of a backward hayseed hinterland. Best to ignore a place that is dull and mundane, so the thinking goes, and let us instead consider the big universal themes of love, death, sex, and existence.

But, the wonder is how Krotesch is able to confront these difficulties and attitudes. Seed Catalogue makes absence a presence: ‘How do you grow a poet?’ in such unfertile soil. The question is part of the poetic answer; the complete answer, of course, is the poem Seed Catalogue.

And the wonder of Seed Catalogue is how in answering this question Krotesch incorporates, to name just a few of his images and themes, the cold and blankness of winter, the serendipity and vagaries of farm life and its quirky accidents (falling off a horse), the painful symmetries of family and European history, and his adolescent sexual awakening. In other words, the answer is a hash or stew of anecdote, memory, landscape, desire, and remembered childhood rich in comical incident

But the answer also includes ‘found’ rhymes and jokes, suggestive metaphors, and the skillful positioning of McKenzie seed catalogue plant descriptions to create a panoramic view of prairie life. The answer includes the understanding, as we shall see, that you grow a poet by mixing memory with desire, to paraphrase T.S.Eliot, the poet/priest of high culture and modernism.

 

“ Start: with an invocation

invoke-

 

His muse is

His muse/if

memory is

 

and you have

no memory then

no meditation

no song (shit

we’re up against it)”

 

What can the poet say if there is nothing to evoke, no memory, or even know what to say? How is a poet supposed to write a poem if there is neither ‘meditation’ nor a written representation (or example) to either react against or for the poet’s rural experience or to suggest how the poet’s experience can be collected and valued in a poem.

The answer is in the next stanza; it is grounded (down to earth?) in a series of remembered comical erotic adolescent scenes filled with typical prairie details and language: ‘a school barn’, ‘Hastings’ slough’ and she was wearing ‘so much underwear’, (after all winter in Western Canada is cold) it was impossible to get close to her and past her ‘CCM skates.’

 

And you also answer the question ‘How do you grow a poet’ by suggesting the work on the land, the shaping of a field, the defining of boundaries with ‘barbed wire,’ ‘staples,’ ‘claw hammer,’ and ‘fencepost’ all the hammering and shaping parallels the making of a poem. The land a blank page on which Krotesch’s ancestors wrote their poems.

But, Krotesch also is urgent about the need to write what we have not written about; he sees the importance and necessity of (re) imagining the past, ‘the home place,’ and making it real. There is also the importance of knowing where to look for history; in Seed Catalogue the writer Rudy Wiebe is considered a significant guide to where to look for the past.

Uncle Freddie, who did not have enough money to buy a pound of coffee, is an example of using the imagination to create the real.

 

“ Every morning at breakfast

he drank a cup of hot water

with cream and sugar in it.”

 

Kroetsch as a young boy finds this curious and asks why.

Uncle Freddie, a gentle man answers, “ Don’t you understand anything?”

Or, don’t you see the importance and power of the imagination in the act of creating, and in this case, imagining ‘real’ coffee. In short, it is necessary for us to imagine the real, oddly, to construct the real.

 

And at the same time Krotesch understands poetry has limits. Poetry cannot construct a landscape, that is, “break up that space with huge design and, like the fiction of the Russian steppes, build a giant artifact.” Nor can poetry create or be a substitute for friendship and camaraderie between Purdy and Krotesch in the same way, say, a serious round of drinking and reciting poetry can be important to two poets: “ No song can do that” writes Krotesch. Seed Catalogue’s attitude towards itself as a poem and poetry is playful; on the one hand it affirms the need and value of poetry in creating the real, and indirectly identity, and at the same time it challenges the value of poetry and its abilities to transform or reflect experience. The poem, like the poet, plays with itself.

 

But you may ask what in the world does all this poetic complexity have to do with an Italian-Canadian living in a large urban prairie city.

I am, of course, referring to myself (a slippery concept Krotesch would argue by the way) and I think it is useful to see Seed Catalogue not only as seriocomic long poem about Krotesch search for a way to write about his specific past. Seed Catalogue can also be understood as a kind of aesthetic manifesto; its aesthetic values strive to broaden the net by which we define culture, experience, and ultimately ourselves. The asethetetics of High Culture and modernism tend to be very particular about what is let in as art and even sometimes what it lets out as art. Krotesch’s writing suggests, as we say in Italian, “tutto fa brodo,” “everything makes a soup,” that is, everything can be included in a poem the high, low, and everything in between. Krotesch makes it clear that the culture of the prairies is rich in imagination, character, and incident. The place were you live, the stories of people and places, the voices and jokes, the food you ate, the arguments over money, the weather endured, the lost Old World, language, the relentless beat of spiking down track, your memories, scraps of your parent’s memories, the growing literally of a garden, the smell of crushed grapes in the fall, all of this and more was/is valid.

 

And this is a very liberating attitude or perspective especially if you are starting out as a writer and believed, like I did, that books were written in places rich in literary tradition like London, New York, or Paris. Writers were sophisticated people who had a gift and power other mere mortals simply did not possess. How they acquired this gift was a mystery. They lived in homes with original art on the wall bought cheap at the beginning of some famous artist’s career and worked in book-lined studies. I imagined their apartments where hardcover books lay causally about on the edges of big soft brown couches. At parties the women were tall and angular with acidic tongues; the men looked rumpled and were intelligent. Whenever someone spoke out fell a profound insight or a bon mot. How could I, from a rural Italian family who came from a small obscure village in Southern Italy to a large urban prairie city, ever hope to become part of the witty, sophisticated, and progressive world of Art and Literature?

My mother worked in a clothing factory sewing zippers onto bulky green winter coats. My father worked as a section man for the railway cleaning snow off switches in the winter and replacing ties and rail in the summer. Indeed, ‘how do you grow a poet?’ It seemed impossible.

 

But Krotesch’s pointed a way out. It was okay to write about neglected rural Southern Italy life. Hell, poets grow best when neglected.

Seed Catalogue quietly and urgently stated it was also okay (and therefore I was free) to write about and use agricultural themes and images, in my case rural Calabria and the family garden.

 

And the writing did not have to restrict itself to a maudlin tragic view, a kind of dark Catholicism that characterized early Italian-Canadian literature where characters found themselves cast out of the Eden of their homeland and adrift in the bewildering landscape of a large modern urban city. The clash of generations- between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters- was portrayed in the literature as another bitter layer of disappointment to be endured in a foreign country. Krotesch’s poetry, on the other hand, was full of wit, puns, bits of lyric, history, personal memory, guffaws, roars, and a sly cold eye on the truth and an almost hyper self-awareness.

The voice in Seed Catalogue and the long poem The Sad Phoenician is a clever mix of rural perspective and sophisticated cultural knowledge. The voice in both poems manages to glue together the attitudes and experiences of the rural sly prairie farmer (or ‘contandi’) to the outlook, experience, and book knowledge of the city intellectual. In both poems Krotesch addressed, directly and indirectly, my own conflicts and confusions about the writing life: What to write about? How do I presume to write? Does anyone in the capital care to know about a past rural Southern Italian culture? Working with your arms, hands, and back is real work compared to reading, thinking, and writing is it not?

I was only to hear much later about the successful American writer Philip Roth who quipped in an interview how he was surprised so many people were interested in reading about Jewish-American life.

But, the poems addressed these conflicts and opposites I was trying to reconcile: the rural Calabrian traditions and culture of my parents versus my university education and my acceptance of English speaking Canadian culture. Intellectual work versus physical work, rejected Calabria versus embraced Tuscany, the internationally known art cities of Rome and Florence versus the obscure unknown villages of Cosoleto and Aquarro, the here and now of Canada versus remembered and imagined Southern Italy.

The large lost garden plots of Italy compared to the small garden in the backyard beside the garage.

Krotesch’s response was simple; break away from the long shadow of tradition and start or write your own tradition. Too much reverence for the past creates paralysis in a writer especially at the beginning of his writing career.

So when I finally sat down to write about my agrarian rural Italian family- I agree with Bob on this point, writers are slow learners – this is one of the poems that came out so to speak. It is from the book ‘The Fate of Olives’ although I should add the book is primarily prose and uses poems as a kind of connective tissue to hold the various prose pieces together.

 

 

Carmelo Militano is an award winning poet & writer. He won the F.G. Bressani award for poetry in 2004 for his chapbook Ariadne’s Thread. His poetry includes the collections Morning After You and The Stone Mason’s Notebook. Militano’s novel Sebastiano’s Vinewas short-listed for the Margaret Laurence fiction prize and his non-fiction work The Fate of Olives was also short-listed. His reviews, essays, and literary interviews have appeared in journals across Canada. Militano currently hosts and produces the P.I. New Poetry show, CKUW 95.9 FM, University of Winnipeg. Lost Aria is his fifth book.

 

Cover image: Photo by Melina Piccolo,

Tags: agricultureCanadaCarmelo Militanodesiregarden plotsimaginationlandliteraturememoryplayfulnessPoetryRobert Kroteschrural life
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Bear encounters in Italy: Jj4, anthropomorphized nature and the dialectics of generations – Post by Maurizio Vitale (a.k.a. Jack Daniel)

May 2, 2023

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HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran
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HAIR IN THE WIND – Calling on poets to join international project in solidarity with the women of Iran

by Dreaming Machine
6 months ago
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HAIR IN THE WIND we  invite all poets from all countries to be part of the artistic-poetic performance HAIR IN...

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