La poesia Beat in Italia: uno studio translocal

Building on recent transnational Beat Generation scholarship and focusing on poetry, this essay aims to expand the geographical scope of Beat culture by including Italy. It does so considering a number of questions, such as what ties Beat poets had with Italy and Italian culture; how and when their texts migrated to Italy and with what effects on the receiving culture, including publishers, journalists, general readers and poets. It investigates the ramifications of Beat poetry as a transatlantic flux between the United States and Italy during roughly two and a half decades (1956-1980), re-discovering an otherwise neglected Italian American writer, and assessing whether the Beats’ aesthetics did impact Italian culture glocally.

Haiku

A brief form of poetry originally developed in Japan around the thirteenth century, haiku are typically composed of three lines with a total of seventeen onji, or syllable-like units. Traditional haiku depicts the natural world, is written in the present tense, and includes minimal subjective commentary from the poet, often reflecting Buddhist principles of interrelatedness and egolessness. Much like other forms of Asian culture, haiku played a significant role in the development of early modernism, notably the poetic movement Imagism developed primarily by Ezra Pound, H.D., and Amy Lowell. Haiku has maintained a strong presence globally and in Western literature throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, seeing a particularly strong resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s, when the poetic form and the related ideas of Zen Buddhism were embraced and disseminated by the Beat poets.

Monotony, the Churches of Poetry Reading, and Sound Studies

Engaging with and amending the terms of debates about poetry performance, I locate the origins of the default, neutral style of contemporary academic poetry readings in secular performance and religious ritual, exploring the influence of the beat poets, the black arts movement, and the African American church. Line graphs of intonation patterns demonstrate what I call monotonous incantation, a version of the neutral style that is characterized by three qualities: (1) the repetition of a falling cadence within a narrow range of pitch; (2) a flattened affect that suppresses idiosyncratic expression of subject matter in favor of a restrained, earnest tone; and (3) the subordination of conventional intonation patterns dictated by syntax, and of the poetic effects of line length and line breaks, to the prevailing cadence and slow, steady pace. This style is popularly known as “poet voice.” Recordings of four contemporary poets—Natasha Trethewey, Louise Glück, Michael Ryan, and Juliana Spahr—demonstrate this style, which contrasts with more expressive, idiosyncratic readings by poets as distinct as Frank Bidart and Kenneth Goldsmith.

Ethnos and the Beat Poets

Rising from the streets of New York with his songs like Caruso or Sinatra, but in words. “Sweet Milanese hills” brood in his Renaissance soul, evening is coming on the hills. Amazing and beautiful Gregory Corso, the one and only Gregory the Herald.

ANTOLOGIJE BIT I ANDERGRAUND POEZIJE VOJISLAVA DESPOTOVA

Polazeći od šireg konteksta recepcije bit i andergraund poezije u našem kulturnom prostoru, u radu se analizira antologija Fuck you: iz američke underground poezije (1985, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1998) Vojislava Despotova. Na osnovu istraživanja došli smo do uvida da je Despotov ovu antologiju i njen predgovor preveo iz izdanja Fuck you: Underground poems. Untergrund Gedichte (1968) Ralf-Rajnera Rigule, iako je u knjizi navedeno da je on autor predgovora i priređivač. Bavićemo se relacijama ove dve knjige i njihovim kulturnim i političkim značajem i funkcijama. Takođe, osvrnućemo se i na antologiju Beat poezija koju je Despotov objavio 1991. godine, a koja takođe predstavlja prevod izbora Beat Poets koji je Džin Barou načinio 1961. Uporednom analizom i analizom prevoda i prevoda-plagijata nastojaćemo da osvetlimo problematiku u procesu recepcije, prepreke u usvajanju stranog i kreiranje odgovarajućeg konteksta, kao i ulogu posrednika i shvatanje antologije kao izvora.