For my dear friend here on Gather and fellow pre Simulationist poet Amy George, to whom I turned for advice on a poem for the first time last night, and whose key suggestion changed this piece from a travelogue into an elegy. As long as his music lives, Luciano Pavarotti lives in us.
Stumbling upon the Piazza Maggiore we crumpled, we dropped;
I doubled over and scratched at livid toes before craning upward
Toward vast shapes of monuments I´d scanned blindly instants before,
Marking from Neptune´s fountain. Then the geometry of Bologna´s centre
That I´d somehow resisted gazing on, its arched and columned grandeur,
Lifted my frame aloft, elbows akimbo, into flames of Italian sunlight.
Here someone had stood or crouched or knelt in reflected glory;
Here Il Duce´s and Hitler´s soldiers had goose-stepped past as well.
Here upright popes, kings, cardinals, princes, monks, dukes and priests
All had paced or crawled or ridden in cavalcade through cloudless heated air.
In each new epoch architects with diagrams in hand had come here
To cluck their tongues, or snort, or glare as a fancy digital camera
Does when computing for brightness, blinking its fierce red eye.
Here we gaping Americans arrive panting in masses, sporting new sunglasses
And guidebooks and water bottles and dim aches for history´s seal of the Real:
We, the dollared people, global economy tourist class, loneliest on the planet;
We, the most belled and whistled; our flipped-open cell phones to be found
Somewhere on our persons in case of death from pizza or homesickness.
There was a youth nearby us, stretched out prostrate on the loggia´s steps;
He nestled with his portable stereo and mouthed the words to Nessun Dorma.
Pavarotti was singing this aria for him alone; we pallid tourists didn´t figure.
When he raised his dark Roman brow, I glimpsed eyes drenched with sorrow.
There dwelt more feeling in his face than memory on my camera´s chip.
Today I swayed in the Piazza, clutching wife and mother and passport.
We squinted at more sun than shadow, and listened as Luciano´s echo
Bounced off smooth stone from a boombox, and trilled into hot empty skies.
JFW Sept. 12, Bologna, Italy--September 19, 2007 Granada, Spain
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Comments: 62
I´m glad you had an experience through these words, Charlotte.
Feeling, culture, history: You are right, lynne. It is one inseparable local experience. And I do not have to be Clifford Geertz to say that when we globalizers go ¨native¨we ought to fully cherish the local reality, its own palimpsest of intricate symbols and markers that we cannot decipher using a one size fits all guidebook. Pavarotti belonged to all of us on the planet--his voice made this so--but his province was Bologna, and his heart still belonged to his village of Modena, a few miles away.
Thank you for the observation, John.
I am always so glad to see your icon on my pages, Faith, and read your capsule reviews.
I appreciate the compliment from a fellow poet, Umar.
Thank you, again, my friend for your incisive comment.
What a line John, I will have to contemplate upon it for some time.
And as always from you, great inner warmth and light.
Thank you Jay for dropping by.
Cheryl, it is good to see you again!
Boris, can we download our subjectivity? Do we capture presence in digital images?
The moment is here and I am in it our outside of it.
Thank you for discerning the imagery´s content, John.
I´m glad I brought you into the piazza, Ron.
Reading both your elegy and your most recent comment
produced this physical reaction.
I will go to Bologna and see this place for myself and will remember the past
and present spirits of the piazza, enjoy my pizza, ignore my cell phone and listen for the wavering echo of Pavarotti on the smoothly worn stones.
It is a rich pleasure, and a moving mental treat to read your delicious poems, John.
A big salute to my Shaykh in San Diego, recently featured in the newspapers for his fearless practice of his faith. Thank you for reading my free verse, Ali, always an honor to see you on my page.
Thank you for extending my poem´s meaning with your cogent analysis of the current state of Americans abroad, Tom, as well as the loss of meaning when we just look at the map, instead of finding the territory.
Magi, I´m delighted you enjoyed this brief moment in the Piazza Maggiore with me, my friend.
"dim aches for history´s seal of the Real" Reminds me of Eddie Izzard's quip, "I'm from europe. You know, where the history comes from."
The early passages here reminded me of my own longing to encounter real human history. I've never left this country and dont know what it's like to stand in a cultural wake of more than three hundred or so years.
Then you reflect that back at me, "We, the dollared people, global economy tourist class, loneliest on the planet," and I'm forced to wonder what good i'd be doing myself by purchasing a side order of someone else's heritage.
But we all want to be dwarfed by history, by nature, by art. History is distant, nature is cruel and might not stop at giving perspective and the great artists pass on one by one. Until I can afford a trip abroad I'll be happy to be dwarfed by your poems.
John, an elegant tribute and elegy.
Like the feeling on that young mans face, these four words spoke so much to me... I loved a lot of thinga about this poem, this phrase is one... then there is the little tour I got of Bologna, it was an amazing trip, sitting in Chennai city, and travelling to Bologna through the words of a poet, is a journey money can't buy!
I love how you are speaking to the reader and reflecting your minds thoughts, and observing the place and comprehending your feelings and comprehending other people and have enough space to mourn one of music's favourite people...
John, there is so much in this poem, it is a feast...
Thank you John for this heartfelt elegy.
Thank you Amy for guiding John into this direction
Welcome back!
I am missing out on so many of my friends' articles because of the limited time I am 'trying' to give to Gathering :)
I could actually feel the mood of the people and the burst of nostalgia that has filled all the corners of music loving world through this poem. A reminder of Pavarrotti's genius. Sadly, I have heard him sing only once, that too on TV, long back. I haven't been able to forget that voice.
American culture and the 'passion' of the youth compared .....very strong images!
That line,
'Today I swayed in the Piazza, clutching wife and mother and passport.'
really got to me--specially the concern over the passport!
Superb elegy, John and a fitting gift for our Amy.
I hope you had time to vist Parma a town near by, famous for the prosciutto and parmesan cheese, my favorites.
discomfort engages a very personal sensory involvement with this poem as I
stretch and blink before entering the poem. Before placing my vision within its scan of multiple historical and cultural scapes, I taste the words to position myself in a fully-engaged front row seat for a poetic filmlike stride through emotional montages of historical and cultural import and extended future impacts artfully scripted in wide-angled narrative.
The authored self and my voyeuristic accompaniment are objectively and subjectively seen and scene in a continuum of histories' pivotal and monumental contributions of political, religious ,cultural ,architectural and artistic dimensions. Using varieties of physical posture to beautifully personify the paths that converged and diverged and emerged from this very place, haunts and humors a bit, now attained by the most modern travel in contrast to the challenges of the highlighted wayfarers and conquerors who powerfully quested through the very same Piazza.
The "modern" tourists scan the preserved and still lively center where they brush attentions lightly on the surface, often never even aware of the historic import. Digital high speed transference of the memory freezes the moment for immediate future recall without need to linger over sensory or descriptive relationship or lingering effect, in most cases.
The journey taken in this poem thirsts for all contextual spicing and is sated only when the indulgence is internalized, personally referenced and engaged in dialogues of self in first , second and third person stance almost simultaneously blended. There is humor, disdain, wisdom, educated study, and modern transformation applied to every sound and sight. The "tasting" is exquisitely rendered and saturated with lively, throbbing detail. The pivotal voice gifted to Pavorotti, to inspire this poem and to spiritually gift the planet forever with its most magnificent resonance shines a light through the mazes and tunnels and labyrinths and chasms that reverberate in every arch and footstep. The striking sculpture of Neptune impacts the scene and the grand musical overvoice with grandeur and vibrant echoes of times when the most elevated heights of artistic search and expression were a necessary and central element of every design.
The "youth" in his enraptured mourning elevates the composite poem with the passions so fully experienced and expressed, not even engaging the surround sound traffic of foreign footsteps.
That the author is magnetized by this small moment in the crowded Piazza and infuses his own being with the same empathic rapture and sorrow is a transitional charge that gives me goosebumps. I treasure the swaying embrace of mother and wife with him, joining their spirits with the echoes of the finest Voices that now mesmerize and transcend this journey into a revitalized stance of immeasurable beauty. The boombox may be a plastic messenger of diffused and edited sound but with Pavarotti….even the most primitive radio would still emit an essence that can and does move little moments into epic exhalations, as witnessed by this magnificent poem. The "hot empty skies" I am sure felt quite full after inhaling it's fully engaged transitions, throbbing in invisible ionic intimacies with the exchange.
The chemistry of your friendship with Amy gifts this with co-creative magic of the finest sort....a wonderful dedication to a most beautiful soul and poet.
My first experience with Pavarotti was on an jet at 37,000 feet as I crossed the Continental Divide back in the mid 80's, I believe. Not being a huge fan of the opera, my first glimpse of this man's immense talent was while watching that movie he made (the name escapes me) about the opera singer that falls in love and takes a mistress.
Nonetheless, as you can see, it wasn't the theme (or even the title - lol) of the movie that stayed with me; it was this man's presence and the feeling that I was watching someone that truly was given a "gift". I can still remember the goose bumps that ran up and down my arms while watching him sing during various parts of the film. Talk about larger than life!
What a great dedication to Amy! Speaking of "talent"...yours never ceases to amaze me, Amigo. Your poetry is so versatile in its scope and well painted in its words, that while the eyes rest and admire the work, the mind is often left exhausted with the experience. Here you mix history, culture, architecture, humor and social observations into a blended drink of proportional perspective that simply and succinctly places the reader into the state of mind of a person, the first time they take a look out of a jet from 40,000 ft. Ya know?
"We, the most belled and whistled; our flipped-open cell phones to be found
Somewhere on our persons in case of death from pizza or homesickness."
If not hanging narcissistically from the ear! LOL! Thanks for the tour from inside your eyes, John!
The scope of feeling is sadness, irony, once, even laughing, "in case of death from pizza or homesickness." This is tremendous for the reader, but you succeeded seamlessly with guideposts for our minds as we traveled your poem.
Long live Pavarotti.
I hope all is well. Now that I'm back from vacation I'm enjoying catching up on your recent posts. :)
P.S. Photos were embedded via a link in the first part of my article, sorry about that! I don't normally use Snapfish but I decided to so I could print to a local store instead of paying shipping.
These are visionary insights to fountains, plazas, history's time-warp, and a great opera singer. We stand, crouch and kneel with you amidst the ornamentations of the crowded plaza. All of us partake of this "cavalcade through cloudless heated air," simultaneously holding our breath in anticipation, and releasing it in an amalgam of continental wonder. The camera moves amongst the throngs, to mark the digital age, glimpse the "gaping Americans," and record the outward details of sunshades, dog-eared guidebooks, and half-empty water bottles. We are pierced by the revealing phrase, "feeling in his face." Can substance be internalized, can essential understanding be absorbed by this nameless, faceless crowd?
We remember Luciano Pavarotti singing his heart out with Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballe, and conductor Zubin Mehta in a grand, glowing performance of Puccini's "Turandot." The vast scope of Puccini's gift is readily heard in this remarkable recording, from the skillful writing for chorus to the soaring realization of great musical ideas. Luciano soars, sends us to new islands of sheer vocal beauty, and traverses the operatic landscape with memorably touching harmony.
Your verse reminds me of the orchestral compositions by Ottorino Respighi, a master of rich, symphonic color. Born in Bologna during the year 1876, Respighi wrote a prolific amount of music until his death in 1936. In "Fountains of Rome," we visit at dawn the fountain of the Valle Giulia, at morn the Triton fountain, at mid-day the Trevi fountain, and at sunset the fountain at the Villa Medici. Like your poem, John, we are shown multiple wonders of writing for different times of day, symbolic of different eras of cultural and social history. We move through the past glories of Lucullus, to mingle with the noisy throng at the Trevi, the busy waves at the Triton, the delicacy of the Valle Giulia, all the while remembering the gardens which once decorated the now-populated spaces of the city.
Respighi's "Pines of Rome" also adds a dimension to the picture you paint with your words. The pines of the Villa Borghese, the pines near a Catacomb, the pines of the Gianicolo, and the pines of the Appian Way all assemble before us a most evocative portrait of the survival of Rome as a cultural treasure. We can visualize the glories of the past, the victories, the triumphs, and the sadness of lost beauty in modernity. Tourism mixed with carbon monoxide can miss all of these things. Both Respighi's music and your poetic reflection bid us to address our impatience and misalignment. The call is to see anew with sentient clarity instead of insensitive waste.
More could be said, but your work stands alone on its own merit. This is really one of the best pieces you've composed. It is tantalizing to imagine what you will do next. Bravo, bravissimo, my friend! Even Luciano would be shouting,"Encore, encore!" Until next time...
In friendship,
Glenn T.
Bravo.
Wonderfully written poetry filled with wit and grit
Nimesh
I loved the section about the boy listening to Pavarati on the loggia´s steps. You captrued wonderfully the quality of emotion with vivid imagry and severity. I didn't know anyone at that age who might have been listening to Pavarati, but I am sure they were there.
Thank you for this snap shot in words that allow us to journey with you and see the world with such penetrating obeservations and grace. Beautiful and satisfying.
Unless you were speaking from Amy's perspective?
I always knew I was happy not to be an American tourist.
Have you ever listened to the duet Luciano sang with Celine Dion, "I Hate You Then I Love You"? What a pair I tell you not!
i particularly like:
"Here Il Duce´s and Hitler´s soldiers had goose-stepped past as well."
"blinking its fierce red eye."
"Here we gaping Americans arrive panting in masses, sporting new sunglasses and guidebooks and water bottles"
"loneliest on the planet"
ah, Luciano...
Today I swayed in the Piazza, clutching wife and mother and passport.
We squinted at more sun than shadow, and listened as Luciano´s echo
Bounced off smooth stone from a boombox, and trilled into hot empty skies.
Beautiful ending..
To learn and so love the beautiful place's beat not
skip, be snobbed but hug every word here magical !!!
Blessings and best wishes - S.