Poems on Italy

Nice, Ossobuco. Do you want other poems of Italy here? This one is a poem about Italy by Richard Wilbur that is not available on the web...

(His commentary was available online, so I've posted it here in blue.)

It is, in the first place, a minutely descriptive poem, in which I portray a wall-fountain in one of the public gardens of Rome, and then proceed across town to describe the celebrated fountains in St. Peter's Square. At the same time the poem presents, by way of its contrasting fountains, a clash between the ideas of pleasure and joy, of acceptance and transcendence.


[Wilbur reads the poem.]

A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra

Under the bronze crown
Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet
A serpent has begun to eat,
Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

Past spattered mosses, breaks
On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills
The massive third below. It spills
In threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

A scrim or summery tent
For a faun-mènage and their familiar goose.
Happy in all that ragged, loose
Collapse of water, its effortless descent

And flatteries of spray,
The stocky god upholds the shell with ease
Watching, about his shaggy knees
The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

His fauness all the while
Leans forward, slightly, into a clambering mesh
Of water-lights, her sparkling flesh
In a secular ecstasy, her blinded smile

Bent on the sand floor
Of the trefoil pool, where ripple-shadows come
And go in swift reticulum,
More addling to the eye than wine, and more

Interminable to thought
Than pleasure's calculus. Yet since this all
Is pleasure, flash, and waterfall,
Must it not be too simple? Are we not

More intricately expressed
In the plain fountains that Maderna set
Before St. Peter's -- the main jet
Struggling aloft until it seems to rest

In the act of rising, until
The very wish of water is reversed,
That heaviness borne up to burst
In a clear, high, cavorting head, to fill

With blaze, and then in gauze
Delays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fine
Illumined version of itself, decline,
And patter on the stones its own applause?

If that is what men are
Or should be, if those water-saints display
The pattern of our aretè,
What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

Spangled, and plunging house?
They are at rest in fulness of desire
For what is given, they do not tire
Of the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

And riddled pool below,
Reproving our disgust and ennui
With humble insatiety.
Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

Before the wealthy gate
Freezing and praising, might have seen in this
No trifle, but a shade of bliss --
That land of tolerable flowers, that state

As near and far as grass
Where eyes become the sunlight, and the hand
Is worthy of water: the dreamt land
Toward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.


It may be that the poem I have just read arrives at some sort of reconciliation between the claims of pleasure and joy, acceptance and transcendence; but what one hears in most of it is a single meditative voice balancing argument and counterargument, feeling and counterfeeling.

Richard Wilbur
(1921-

Piffka's note -- I liked the detailed descriptions and can imagine myself standing in awe, wondering about each separate figure and how the sculptor thought to put it all together. Most of all, I love the last couple of lines.

Not only do I want you to post more poems, this one is right up my alley, I am endlessly drawn to Rome's fountains.
Now I'll go back and read it..



Yes, I like those lines too. And the Maderna fountains...
There is one fountain (on piazza Simeone), which doesn't even have a spout, it is just an immense bowl spilling at edge, a precursor to the spilling pools we see in various places built recently...
The tortoise fountain by Landini (I think) in piazza Mattei is my favorite.
For now.

Now I want to post fountain pictures.. well, maybe another time, in another topic or if I manage an album through my work computer.

Another by Ciardi,


IV

You would never believe to watch this man
open his pocket knife to cut his cheese
(his bread he tears with his hands)
and lay it down precisely on a leaf
and tip his bottle off against his mouth
(which he wipes with the back of hhis hand)
and life the knife again to peel an apple
so carefully from stem to bud it is all
one red spiral, and toss it on a bush
to see it against green and color of loam
and slap the crumbs from his lap for the birds to have
before he sleeps with his hat over his eyes
(for a pillow he joins his hands behind his head)

that all the guns and lances looked to him
all the maps and marches centered here
and all the charges climbed this same small hill

that it was always this man in this field
through all of Europe and the island-South
the kingdomes and their kings were told about.

The same book by Alice Leccese Powers, "Italy in Mind", ends with the poem above by Richard Wilbur.

This poem by Robert Browning is in the book too.

Up at a Villa - Down in the City
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

1
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

2
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
 
3
Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
- I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.
           
4
But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

5
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.

6
Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
           
7 
Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs: in the shine such foambows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in her conch--fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.
           

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle.
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,--I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

9
Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture--the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and so,
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome and Cicero,
"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) "the skirts of
Saint Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached."
Noon strikes - here sweeps the procession; our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.
           
10
But bless you, it's dear - it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still - ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles.
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals:
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

Great poem by Browning... there are a couple of typos, I think, in stanza [8]... thrid and cicala? I'm assuming that's thrill and cicada, but I'm a little iffy on the first. I like a lot of things about it, the rhythms, for example, but mostly I like his near matter-of-fact way of discussing where to live, in the city or a county villa. It is fun to think he is writing it to Elizabeth Barrette. Do you suppose he was?


Glad that the Wilbur was in your collection and I could enter it for you. A lush poem, I think. Several of these could probably be put in the Portal.


Most of all THANKS! Ossobuco, for the good thread!! I have never been to Italy except in my mind, but I know I would love it. For example, I would like to go...

TO FLORENCE

Lord Byron
September, 1809

Oh Lady ! when I left the shore,
The distant shore which gave me birth.
I hardly thought to grieve once more
To quit another spot on earth:

Yet here, amidst this barren isle,
Where panting Nature droops the head,
Where only thou art seen to smile,
I view my parting hour with dread.

Though far from Albin's craggy shore,
Divided by the dark-blue main;
A few brief, rolling seasons o'er,
Perchance I view her cliffs again:

But whereso'er I now may roam,
Through scorching clime, and varied sea,
Though Time restore me to my home,
I ne'er shall bend mine eyes on thee:

On thee, in whom at once conspire
All charms which heedless hearts can move,
Whom but to see is to admire,
And, oh ! forgive the word --- to love.

Forgive the word, in one who ne'er
With such a word can more offend;
And since thy heart I cannot share,
Believe me, what I am, thy friend.

And who so cold as look on thee,
Thou lovely wand'rer, and be less?
Nor be, what man should ever be,
The friend of Beauty in distress?

Ah ! who would think that form had past
Through Danger's most destructive path,
Had braved the death-wing'd tempest's blast,
And 'scaped a tyrant's fiercer wrath?

Lady ! when I shall view the walls
Where free Byzantium once arose,
And Stamboul's Oriental halls
The Turkish tyrants now enclose;

Though mightiest in the lists of fame,
That glorious city still shall be;
On me 't will hold a dearer claim,
As spot of thy nativity:

And though I bid thee now farewell,
When I behold that wondrous scene,
Since where thou art I may not dwell,
'T will soothe to be where thou hast been.

Great poems...bookmarking for futher reading.

On the thrid and cicala, those stopped me too. They were in both the book and on the Utoronto website where the poem is also published on google with different spacing and some different punctuation.

Making me wonder. I ran into this when I researched piazzas for a long time. I could eventually tell who got their material from whom... without attribution - amazing development of errors.

It's got to be cicada, but not sure of the thrid...

On Lord Byron, I have another piece to post later, Canto IV from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to Rome..
Byron is a little push for me to relate to...

but..
I love Joseph Brodkey's poem December in Florence, a 1976 tranlation by himself, in the same Italy in Mind book. Will post it a little later.

I guess I should mention the Italy in Mind book isn't all poems.
I'm sure I added it in the a2k portal, by the way, under Books, Nonfiction, Travel.

Looking forward to them. Weird about thrid and cicala... I've seen typo mistakes get copied over and over but maybe those are real words? Too lazy to look them up now. <yawn>

I think that you can add poems to the portal if they aren't otherwise on the 'net. I just don't know how (and am too lazy to figure it out).

g'night

Great thread, osso! Here's one I hadn't known until I started looking for poems about Italy. It's by Jane Kenyon, who, in case you're not familiar with her, was an American poet who -- until her much too early death in 1995 -- lived in New England with her husband, the poet Donald Hall. The poem was obviously written when they were back home after a trip to Italy.


After Traveling

While in silence I rake
my plot of grass under the great trees--
the oaks and monumental maples--
I think of the proprietor

of the Caffe de Fiori, sleepy, preoccupied,
dressed to the nines,
setting out the tables in the Via Frattina--
extending his empire each day
by the smallest of increments
until there is room for another place . . .

at which we happen to be sitting
on the day the city official comes,
also dressed to the nines, to unwind
his shining metal measure in the street:
two tables must go. But for now
the proprietor shrugs, and a look
of infinite weariness passes
over his face. This is Rome:
remorse would be anomalous. . . .

And the white-coated waiters
arrange on doilied silver trays
the tiers of sugared pastries: angel wings,
cat tongues, and little kiwi tarts;
and the coffee machines fizzle and spurt
such appetizing steam; and a woman
in a long red cape goes by
leading a matched pair of pugs
on a bifurcated leash.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Nice poem, Bree. I particularly love that last image.

This is from the Italian-American Writers website


I Italy


Sound will do what, and colors who?
Hill, hill, mounts, water;
sunfired sunflower field to the sea,
cindery Vesuvius, stone snows of Carrara.


A venetian blue button
sought in-out at thirty shops,
purchased


A mushroom large and browned golden
as cow-splat,
acquired


A one-town ruddy wine pursued through
the winding valleys of the Apennines,
got


The distance trills with murmuring
like red and blue purpling,
meanderer


There can be no paradise
like this boying, girl-filled, fluted voice
vespering air, sealed in its glade
a soul climbing out of flesh clothes.

by Jane Tassi

This looks worth a second look
So please excuse me for interrupting
With something so crass as a bookmark
But this particular bookmark was purchased
On a lovely summer's day
Once upon a time in Toscana

Oh, I like that Tassi poem.

This is not a poem about Italy, but it is written by an Italian.


To Himself


Now will you rest forever,
My tired heart. Dead is the last
deception,
That I thought eternal. Dead. Well I
feel
In us the sweet illusions,
Nothing but ash, desire burned out.
Rest forever. You have
Trembled enough. Nothing is worth
Thy beats, nor does the earth
deserve
Thy sighs. Bitter and dull
Is life, there is nought else. The
world is clay.
Rest now. Despair
For the last time. To our kind, Fate
Gives but death. Now despise
Yourself, nature, the sinister
Power that secretly commands our
common ruin,
And the infinite vanity of
everything.


Giacomo Leopardi
(1798-1837)

Seems dour, eh?

I know the name but not his work..

His works are well known in Italy. His main poetic themes are usually about despair, boredom, death and the futility of life and love.

I found this in one of my poetry books while searching to find a poem about Italy. There are very few poems on the web, which are written in English.

I remember that I stopped posting on this thread because of a copyright issue, re the date of the poems, and copying it. I don't know if I'd be so careful now or not. In any case, I forget the name of the poet (gnashes teeth).
Will come back and post at least the name.. was it harold brodskey? brodkey?
if I can chase it down, and give some kind of reference.