Poetica
The poetic medium has ever been a vehicle for the transmission of deeper dimensions of human experience. This has been so since the time that the rhapsodei chanted and sang Homer’s great tales of mythic heroism and human contention with divine and demonic worlds. It has found expression in the works of those master wordsmiths since Dante, Petrarch and Shakespeare who have sculpted language and compressed human narratives into patterned forms of rhyme and rhythm. And it continues to pour forth in the humour, the wisdom, the irony and the despair voiced by contemporary urban poets and hip hop artists.
Poetry reflects the world back onto itself and can bring to greater light the evanescent and the hidden forces through which we live, move and have our being. Poetic expression addresses the subtleties of language, the complexities of reality, the intensities of experience and the perennial quest for meaning. Like music, the experience of poetry is best had in the hearing.
This page offers both spoken and written pieces for your enjoyment.
Spoken Word
This piece was inspired by a hand-sized fragment of crystalline sulphur gathered from the slopes of Mt. Aetna, near the place of my birth. It brought forth a remembrance of the story of the Sicilian philosopher and engineer, Empedocles of Agrigento, who lived a little before the time of Hippocrates. Empedocles is credited with having been the author of the doctrine of four elements – of air, earth, fire and water. This notion conditioned both Western philosophy and the practice of European medicine for a period of over 2,000 years.
Empedocles is said to have made life easier for the inhabitants of his native Akragas (present-day Agrigento) by draining the fetid swamps that surrounded the town, thereby freeing the local population from yearly epidemics of malaria. He also co-ordinated a massive engineering project that created a huge earthern berm which deflected the searing winds of the Saharan Sirocco away from the cultivated fields that supplied the town thereby increasing crop yields enormously.
According to legend, Empedocles quietly slipped away from an evening celebration held in his honour. A few days later, a search party discovered his bronze sandals placed carefully on the edge of the crater of the active volcano, Mt. Aetna.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
This piece was written in the weeks before my father died in October 2008. It is the fruit of many discussions in which he reflected, among other things, on his time as a soldier in North Africa. One of his tasks at that time was to carry written instructions from the generals’ bunkers to the soldiers on the front line. He died at the age of 91, but not before progressively losing his adamantine strength and vigour during the final few months.
Music by Slipstream (David Capon and Peter Popko)
This piece, Luce Magra or Thin Light presented in my native tongue, reflects on the failure of flesh and the breakdown of our bodies that can occur during the latter days of our earthly life.
Music by Slipstream (David Capon and Peter Popko)
A paeon to the bright and merciful Lord.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
A trance recitation inspired by Carl Sagan’s reflections on an image of the earth taken by the Voyager spacecraft from deep interplanetary space.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
On crystalline attention.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
A remembrance of Golgotha.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
This piece is a comment on the obscenity of aerial warfare, from the wholesale destruction of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the selective annihilation of Iraq under George Bush Snr and George Bush Jnr, to the vehement and senseless destruction of Lebanon in August 2006 and Gaza in January 2009.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
Further reflections on a blood-soaked earth.
Music by Nico Di Stefano
Written Word
This small collection of poems was gathered together in the days immediately after my father died in October 2008. Each of these pieces offers some reflection on the reality of human mortality.
Useful Links
The Lannan Foundation Audio Archives carry hundreds of hours of recordings of contemporary poets, writers, and advocates of cultural freedom. Numerous poets, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jorie Graham, Eamon Grennan, Seamus Heaney and Gary Snyder offer extended readings of their work followed by literary conversation. The Lannan family has done an extraordinary service to the arts in its patronage of and support for writers and others engaged in the creative process. A truly excellent site.
Naropa Poetics offers a remarkable collection of audio files gathered from readings, lectures and discussions at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado from the 1970s until recently. This site is a goldmine replete with shiny specks and weighty nuggets scattered through a profusion of dross and lesser stones. Many of the beats, including Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, McClure and Snyder, are in there. The site holds a number of often fascinating lectures on the origins and expressions of the poetic mind by Robert Creeley. The site also holds rare recordings of Gregory Bateson who, though not a poet, was one who understood intimately the turnings of language and the nature of poetic mind. If you have some hours to spare, and a willingness to sort through the chaff, you will find unexpected treasures at Naropa Poetics.