Poets From Italy

"There are many and various particulars, which, by a kind of natural instinct, every one judges to be right, and expects to meet with, from those with, whom he converses. Such as mutual benevolence and respect; a desire of pleasing and obliging each other; and the like. Nothing therefore ought to be said or done, which may by any means discover, that those, whose company we are in, are not much beloved, or, at least, much esteemed by us."

"We ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man, who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends and acquaintance."

"As therefore, when we consult, not our own pleasures, but that of our friends, our behaviour will be pleasing and agreeable; our first enquiry must be, what those particulars are, with which the greatest part of mankind are universally delighted; and what those are which, in general, they detest, as troublesome and offensive: For thus we shall easily discover, what kind of conduct, in our intercourse with others, is to be avoided, and what to be adopted and pursued."

"You ought to regulate your manner of behaviour towards others, not according to your own humour, but agreeably to the pleasure and inclination of those with whom you converse."

"Now, as in the Latin and other languages, a yawning fellow is synonymous or equivalent to a negligent and sluggish fellow; this idle custom ought certainly to be avoided; being (as was observed) disagreeable to the sight, offensive to the ear, and contrary also to that natural claim, which every one has to respect. For when we indulge ourselves in this listless behaviour, we not only intimate, that the company we are in, does not greatly please us; but also make a discovery, not very advantageous to ourselves; I mean, that we are of a drowsy, lethargic disposition: which must render us by no means amiable or pleasing, to those with whom we converse."

"It is moreover extremely indecent to spit, cough, and expectorate (as it were) in company, as some hearty fellows are apt to do: and more so, when you have blown your nose, to draw aside and examine the contents of your handkerchief; as if you expected pearls or rubies to distil from your brain."

"For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use."

"Why are there age limits? why can't i marry a 12-year old? Helen of Troy was 12. Juliet and Cleopatra were still teenagers when they became famous. Most heroines of classic novels and poems were underage by today's laws. Thomas Edison married a 16-year-old. Medical studies show that the best age for a woman to have children is between 15 and 25 (lowest chances of miscarriage, of birth defects and, last but not least, of the woman dying while giving birth); while the worst age is after the mid 30s. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to cement a real friendship with your children; the older you are, the more likely that the "generational gap" will hurt your children's psychology. Therefore it is much more natural to have a child at 16 than at 40."

"Mass culture is a way to escape from the psychological suffering that comes with that insight into the human condition, an escape alternative to the one preached by world religions. Mass culture is a modern invention to escape from existential anguish."

"Michael Brown was a thug."

"I really think we should modify the law so that one can be sued for defaming not only living people but also the memory and reputation of people who died centuries ago."

"Zappa was not a protester or an activist. He was merely a man who used his brain."

"If you tend to text and skim the surface of the Internet, you indirectly shape your mind to only deal with superficial matters."

"If the cop honestly felt that this was a young black man (as politically incorrect as it sounds, this is the most violent category of people in the USA in 2014) aiming a gun at him, the cop can hardly be blamed for shooting first."

"The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved."

"Philosophy is the art of turning solutions into problems"

"Beatles' "aryan" music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll: it replaced syncopated african rhythm with linear western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles."

"What we understand is not enough to understand why we understand it. (Signature line on his emails)"

"The paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation."

"Philosophy is the art of saying something incredibly stupid and making it sound incredibly intelligent."

"...but defining their sound was Little Girls, an exuberant ska wrapped in an electronic patina, with modernist vocals à la XTC and a touch of dementia."

"Mass shooters and serial killers are white Christian men, with rare exceptions, and frequently with Anglosaxon last names."

"The most difficult part of finding a solution is to accept that there is a problem"

"We are swimming in the lake in which future generations will drown"

"Trump is not an idiot at all, but those who voted for him are."

"The ones who do not wander are the ones who are truly lost"

"If an animal spread plastic garbage all over the planet, we would certainly exterminate it."

"Question answers instead of answering questions."

"When the impossible happens, everybody has a very simple explanation for why it was inevitable"

"«This collection of poems by Caterina Davinio […] rewards the reader with fascinating lines and jarring phrases that bring fresh and dangerous enjoyment to the practice. Be alert, all who enter here» (David W. Seaman about Serial Phenomenologies)In Caterina Davinio, Fenomenologie seriali / Serial Phenomenologies, Campanotto, Pasian di Prato (UD) 2010"

"«Nevertheless it is about themes endowed with depth, rather uncomfortable in a culture that often seeks from poetry almost a consolation or at least a reconciliation with the world. Davinio’s poetry is instead problematic, not at all conciliatory or reconciled. Caterina develops her themes in a vibrant language, dry and almost essential, taut and antirhetorical» (Gianmario Lucini)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«There are moments when Caterina is Duchampian with the digital medium, as in “UFOp (Unidentified Flying Objects Poetry)” (1999) and in “Poem in Red” (2004). You can think of Davinio’s work as something resembling the imagination without wires and the Words in Freedom, the second phase of the Italian Futurism (from 1909 to 1914), because she retrieves this technique and applies it in the digital realization of her videopoems, net poetry, in the structure of Karenina.it» (Jorge Luiz Antonio about Davinio's video and net-art) In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«“White / tells my story.” In my humble opinion, this is the couplet that “epitomizes” the work, which is miraculously saved from the devil, by the artist Caterina Davinio […] Indeed, the protagonist of the vital scenes is heroin. […] Davinio’s language is fast and cutting, cut by the broken bottles in the street.» (Nunzio Festa about Il libro dell'oppio / The Book of Opium)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«Reading Caterina Davinio’s Waiting for the End of the World, one is reminded of so many writers taking on the task of speaking for a desperate people – Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose conflated “Black Woman” and Africa make his mouth lyrical, Aimé Césaire, in his “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land,” accepting and speaking for his people in all their ugliness and suffering. But Caterina’s poet is not speaking of her own land: in this double poem anchored in Africa and India, she seems to take on the burden of the former British Empire. That is why T.S. Eliot came to mind, if not also Rudyard Kipling and in a sad way, Ernest Hemingway» (David W. Seaman about Waiting for the End of the World)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"Only our voices and gray strips of palm like shining backs of coleoptera, atrocious and suffering under the infinite sun; …"

"The head tumbles between the legs like a wooden ball you fall, dark night in the eyes, the door a span away inaccessible you are on your knees ..."

"«Sharp poetry, essential, cutting, between irony and tragedy, with lightning flashes of desperation and piety, of memory and anguish. It has a painful and lost grandeur» (Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«She is able to oscillate between classical allusions to the holy books and the works of great poets like Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Borges, Artaud and Celan, and then she comes to terms with the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti, Corso, with the philosophy of the existentialists. With immediate acceptances, repulses, with vast ignitions and immense fires, with echoes of jazz and pop music» (Dante Maffia about Fatti deprecabili/Deprecable Facts) rhizome.org"

"«It is the poetry of Rimbaud removed from the soot of the history of literature» (Paolo Mantioni about Il libro dell'oppio / The Book of Opium)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"Now that everything is, or may be, "digital" and could contemplate its membership in an e-category, the final product should be always studied, not only in its appearance, but in its process, structure, in its modes of functioning and of presentation / fruition and also in an historical perspective."

"E-literature is certainly a broader concept than e-poetry, but it can also be limiting: like Verlaine in a famous line from his Art Poétique, one might conclude: et tout le reste est e-littérature, to emphasize the imponderable specificity of poetry."

"A central concept called into question by net-poetry is the relation with reality. Does it make sense to define "virtual" reality as what actually reaches us through the Internet? How the artist relates to it, how he or she perceives and represents it and how a net-poet should "sing" it? The relationship with reality mediated by the Internet is a network of contacts in itself, it is ontologically a "connective" image of reality, which gradually outlines and qualify itself, both as reality and as representation."

"Language completes the existence of the world and makes it "usable" for humans."

"If language is a virus from space, even people could be disguised aliens on our planet, because language is inextricably bound to human mental processes, in the forms of our intelligence, to the extent that symbolic language is what makes us different from other living beings."

"When I speak of language, I do not only mean poetic or verbal language: I am thinking of the language of mathematics, of physics, et cetera. It is a fascinating topic. Language is an interface between us and the world. Beyond language there is nothing but pure mystical contemplation of the universe."

"Intelligence is always connective. The biosphere works this way, through continuous contacts, catalysts, neurons which touch and activate other neurons. Today, this all has not only biological and chemical consistency, but a technological and teleinformatics one: it is not just a metaphor, or a "virtual" reality, but a real entity, a kind of emanation of the biosphere."

"The biosphere is now enriched with an other stratum, mid-way between the material and the spiritual, and that is the web of connections, a “virtual” reality made of communication by means of the new media. On a daily basis, we move around in this space with all the content we are capable of. This physically concretizes the concept that all humans can merge in a single moment, where no one is separated from the others and all become a single entity, which is the web."

"Day after day I turn on the machines, I dispense their immense memory, every day I fire up the motors, then inside I switch myself off. ..."

"Making art means not only using languages, but also creating new ones. To do this, new tools are indispensable. Even returning to more traditional languages such as linear poetry or narration, after being enriched by the experience of hypertext, hypermedia and multimedia, allows us to rethink the older forms of expression and transfer the lessons of the new media into even the more traditional modalities of language, such as narrative, for example."

"I am ashamed of the polished words, so I hide them throwing rough and crude notes like the Rondanini Pietà still raw with matter on the lines of crystal like the soul that sparkles in one’s eyes. ..."