Ferruccio Brugnaro, Italian Poet

In Venice, Beth and I met up with native Venetian Beat Bard Alessandro Spinazzi. Sandro said to meet him on the Rialto bridge at 2PM, and when I asked him how we would know him, he said "Because I look like you!' We spent the afternoon at a very pleasant street cafe, and the next evening we went to the home Sandro shares with his wife Katy. Sandro had invited the poet Ferruccio Brugnaro and his wife Maria. A wonderful evening of food, wine, poetry and friendship.

Ferruccio is also a native Venetian, and worked for much of his life in the industrial zone of Marghera, just west of Venice, on the mainland. A Communist, an activist, a lifelong poet, Ferruccio has recently read at festivals in San Francisco and Cuba. His work is available here in the United States in a collection called Fist of Sun, translated by Jack Hirschman and published by Curbstone Press, and in a collection for his wife Maria, called Portrait of A Woman, also translated by Jack Hirschman and published by CC Marimbo Press.

Here is a poem called We Don't Want Bosses, Period (from Fist of Sun)

We don't want bosses of any kind,

period.

They've already splashed around

in our blood,

already feasted plenty

on our lives.

Stop asking us so many questions.

Look at our injuries

the damage done to peasants

and miners.

We've gotta yank this plant out of the world

once and for always.

Don't ask anything else of us. We've really

made up our guts.

We don't want bosses

because they're

the same as ever:

because they want the land

all for themselves,

because they want the sun

all for themselves,

because they never stop

robbing, trampling,

and killing, killing

day and night under every kind of sky.

and a poem from Portrait of A Woman, for his wife, Maria:

Sometimes Maria sings

the most intense songs.

Songs I've never

heard before

that aren't heard

anywhere

She sings, sometimes explodes

wordlessly

with her songs

packed with

history.

She sings tirelessly of things,

unknown

events

she moves, sways,

she sings

profound joys to me.

Sings to me, invents, makes up

songs for me

does Maria

returning sometimes

in the middle of the night

songs that can't be described

can't be re-told.