Discovering Poetry

A little poem about my personal discovery of poetry in both English and Italian....

in English:
Discovering Poetry

When I was very young
I would listen to my Aunts and Uncles
During family gatherings.

I was American, I spoke English
I did not know the Italian language
I did not know the use and context of words.

I knew only the form of sentences,
The ripple of the syllables,
Concluding in voluptuous vowels.

Normal speach sounded
Like poetry dancing with laughter
And clothed in beautiful mystery.

                               by Torre DeVito
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And in Italian:

Si prega di commentare. Come sta il mio italiano? Orribile?

Alla Scoperta Della Poesia

Quando ero molto giovane
Vorrei ascoltare i miei zii e le zie
Durante le riunioni di famiglia.

Sono stato americano, ho parlato inglese
Non sapevo la lingua italiana, non sapevo
Che l'uso e il contesto delle parole.

Sapevo che solo la forma delle frasi,
L'ondulazione delle sillabe,
Concludendo in vocali voluttuoso.

Discorso normale suonava
Come la poesia ballando con
Risate e vestiti di bella araba.
                               by Torre DeVito

Let me know how good the translation is, it may not be perfect, but it's Italian!

What are you looking at?

In my little world the Italians discovered or invented almost everything, and anything worth anything that they didn't invent they borrowed and improved upon, like the arch for instance, which was invented by the Mesopotamians, and used liberally by the Romans, who used its principles to create the dome and the vaulted ceiling. The Greeks may have invented Democracy, but the Roman's borrowed it, and invented bureaucracy  and graft.  The Chinese may have invented the noodle, but the Italians made it different thicknesses and shapes and added sauce and meat and cheese. da Vinci dreamed up the horseless carriage, but Italians (so they tell me) did not invent the internal combustion engine, but when they learned about the two-stroke engine they came up with the vast improvement of the four-stroke engine. Henry ford may have come up with mass-production and the boxy model T  but Italians came up with Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, Paganis,. Barossos,  Ghias, and Lanzas. America may have fallen in love with the automobile, but the Italians romanced it and taught it to dance.

One little car company in Italy has been swallowing up the others recently. FIAT now owns Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lancia, and Maserati; and in 2009 they took a controlling stake in Chrystler,  they expanded that stake in January of 2012 in what has amounted to a merger, and the gorgeous little FIAT 500 with its almost 45 MPG highway, is popping up all over the American landscape, including my driveway out here in Bear Creek, North Carolina. In other words, we bought one.

I annoyed my beautiful and patient wife throughout the buying process by oft repeating :"Che cosa guardi, eh? Che cosa guardi?" the line spoken by the baby in the FIAT commercial, which means "What are you looking at, huh? What are you looking at?" Finally my wife said, "Are you done?" to which I replied: "Mi stai spogliando con gli occhi?", the line spoken by the hot Italian model who turns into the FIAT 500 Abarth in another commercial, literally "Why are you undressing me with your eyes." Of course the only thing she was doing with her eyes was rolling them. But don't worry she's had her revenge. We bought the car on July 5th, my Birthday, and thus far she has only let me drive it once,

If you happen to find yourself staring at a FIAT and someone says "What are you looking at?" tell 'em "I'm not sure, but it's Italian."

Father's Day

It has been a year already since Dad passed away. In the year or two before his death he talked to me often about growing up in Brooklyn, New York and being an Italian teenager in the '50s. We laughed at pictures of him in a pompadour, He told me about working at his uncle's car lot, and about some of the girls that he dated, and places he used to go in Brooklyn. .

One time he and some friends built a boat, Apparently it was fairly elaborate with a nice little cabin.He mentioned a young lady he used to take out on the boat, wondering what had ever happened to her, and told how one of his fellow boat-builders rammed into a rock which tore a hole in the plywood and fiberglass hull and sunk the boat, ending all their nautical escapades.

He told me that they would go to Coney Island  and ride the Cyclone or the Wonder Wheel or take a girl on a ride through "The Tunnel of Laffs" or just hang out by the boardwalk when the weather was hot. Other summer days they would go to Jones Beach and body-surf in the waves. I wish I had taken notes!

Dad was an interesting guy, if I do say so myself. He was interested in Photography, Set Design, Modern Art, Hydroponic Gardening, Wind and Solar Power, just a whole bunch of things that most of his peers weren't thinking about in the '50s and early '60s in the city.

Happy father's day Dad. I miss you.

Learning Italian

I've been trying to learn Italian. Tapes and CD's bought at thrift stores and freeware and free resources from the internet, mostly. I'm trying to get to the point where I can really think in Italian. to that end  I have written a new poem in Italian as well as deconstructed a poem that I wrote many years ago, and instead of translate it, rewrite it in Italian. Here are my attempt:s:


Molto Bene
da Torre DeVito

"Molto bene", ha detto Dio,
"Molto bene", quando ha finito
E tutte le sue creazioni
Sono molto buoni
E tu, piccolo che adoro
Sono un capolavoro!

In inglese:

Molto Bene
by Torre DeVito

"Very good," said God,
"Very good!" when He finished
And all his creations
They are very good
And you, little one that I adore
You are a masterpiece!



Arbusto Pino
di Torre DeVito

C'è stato un tempo, dopo una storia di attenzione,
Abbiamo parlato dei volumi interi con ogni parola
E le nostre conversazioni erano come vaste foreste
Quando ogni sfumatura è stata una grande sequoia.


Quando è successo? Gli insulti iniziato
Incenerire il nostro dialogo, divorando
Verbi e aggettivi in fiamme!Il grande incendio ha smesso di bruciare a lungo
Trasformato in brace e cenere alla fine, ma ...


Quelli che restano sono i seguenti:
Un groviglio di erbacce, luoghi di sabbia,
E un deserto di crescita povero albero.
Per l'osservatore casuale le cicatrici sono oscurati:
Una nuova vita è meglio di ceneri fredde


Ma in questo momento arbusto pino emerso
Quando le sequoie una volta erano potenti.

I don't know if the gramar is very good, but it's Italian.

Rabbit Punches

Besides the chickens, we also have rabbits. I tried to get two does (females) and a buck (male) for breeding purposes. I ended up with two bucks and a doe. One of the bucks is sweet and gentle, and loves water, in fact he drinks it as I fill his bowl by turning his head sideways and putting his mouth in the stream. I named him Slurpee for obvious reasons. The doe is a pretty nice doe too, though she hasn't had much luck kindling (having little bunnies) her first kindle died, and her second mating resulted in a false pregnancy. The third member of the menagerie is a little demon of a buck that lies to box at my hands and bite me. I call him "Tyson" after Mike Tyson. I am contemplating rabbit cacciatore.

People often say rabbit tastes like chicken. I don't think so. The texture is a bit reminicent of chicken dark meat: thighs or legs, but it has its own taste: mild, suckulent,  delicious!


Rabbit Cacciatore Recipe:

One 2 1/4 lb rabbit, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 Tbsp fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 chopped medium onion
4 cloves garlic, quartered
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves
3 cups of chopped, very ripe tomatoes (or canned plum tomatoes)
2 red bell peppers, seeded, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 can of whole black olives, pitted

Salt and pepper the rabbit pieces, rub with the basil leaves, brown in olive oil in a large skillet, Cook for 2-3 minutes on one side until lightly browned, then turn the pieces and brown on the other side for a minute or two more. Remove the rabbit pieces to a dish to set aside. Reduce heat to medium. Add onions to the pan, cook for 1 minute. Then add garlic, bell pepper, and mushrooms, cook for a couple minutes more. Add the rosemary and the remaining basil. Rinse, drain and quarter the olives and add them to the pan. Add the rabbit back into the pan along with the olives. Cover with chopped tomatoes. Reduce heat to medium low; cover the pan and cook for 35 minutes. Increase heat to high and cook until the liquid has reduced by half.

Tyson, you'd better watch out! Revenge might be delicious served warm, and it's Italian!

Torre Catch-a-Chicken

We have chickens! But the darn things aren't laying eggs. There are five hens and a rooster. The rooster is a wyandotte, and the hens are red sex-links (they were bred in a cross producing red females) I'm feeding them laying crumbles, some corn for scratch and supplementing with oyster shells. I leave a light on in the chicken house, and have golf balls and fake eggs in the nesting boxes. If I let them out they follow me around. They come when I call. They seen happy, but I didn't get them as pets! I talk to them, nicely. Even when I threaten to cacciatore them I use a soft tone, and they look at me with their heads cocked making clucking noises. They have pea sized brains, and they often look at my feet as if they've never seen them before and wonder if they might not be edible.

In the meantime I guess I'll have to eat something else for breakfast, maybe I'll have some Farina. According to the OED Farina (fah-ree-nuh) is a noun meaning:
1 flour or meal made of cereal grains, nuts, or starchy roots.
2 (archaic) a powdery substance.
And the source is British, from the latin for grain.

Bull Shtuff. Farina means flour in Italian, and Farina (as a breakfast) came from Italy. In America it is mostly called Cream of wheat.

Here is a recipe "Per la Vostra Salute!" (To Your Health)
2 cups low-fat milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup farina (not instant)

Bring the milk and ¼ teaspoon salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Whisk in the farina. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking occasionally, until thickened, 2 to 3 minutes.

Farina, it's Italian!

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Update on the Chickens, We lost a hen a few months ago, and we bought 6 Cochin Hens that will begin laying in the fall, and we get an average of 2 eggs a day right now.


================
This just in... black snakes were stealing our eggs, and the hot weather thwarted them. I caught one trying to eat a golf ball. We put golf-balls in the nest to induce the hens to lay, and apparently the heat wave warmed the golf balls up enough to confuse the snakes. I killed the one snake I found with the golf ball stuck in his mouth, I watched him trying to get it back up, but the curve of his teeth prevented him from getting it out, he just couldn't un-hinge his jaw enough. Perhaps he was just re-positioning for another swallow,  but it didn't look like it would end well for him, and a quick death seemed only humane. He was a black snack that I would gladly have relocated, so I felt bad. The next day two other golf balls were gone, and the egg production is now 3 to 4 eggs a day.

My Italian Valentine

Saint Valentine was Italian, well, actually there are several possible candidates for the historical figure that became Saint Valentine, and all of them are Italian. Little is known about the saint other than that he was martyred on February 14.  In fact, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre seems more likely an event to be associated with any candidate for the real Saint Valentine than would this holiday of cards and candy, with the exception of one account, that has Valentine martyred for performing marriage ceremonies when he was not supposed to be performing any Christian ceremonies. That has something to do with romance, right?

Cupid is Italian, I mean our cupid, the chubby little baby with wings. The Greek Eros was a slender youth, but the Romans sculpted him chubbier, in the renaissance he somehow became a Putto (what we incorrectly call a cherub) a male baby, sometimes with wings, but always carrying his bow and those insidious bolts of desire.

Though Punxsutawney Phil sounds like an Italian gangster the closest thing Italians have to groundhogs day is a proverb that goes "Se San Paol Pe ciar e la Ceriola sciira, De Pinverna no g'o pii paiira Milan" which means "If St Paul('s day) be clear and Candlemas cloudy, we have no more cause to be afraid of winter." (Candelmas is Feb2). This is a pretty obscure proverb, however. Most Italians are more familiar with April 4th as the day of weather prognostication. Another old saying goes "Quattro aprilante, giorni quaranta" or "Quattro aprilante, quaranta dì durant" literally "April 4, 40 days", meaning whatever the weather is like on April 4th it will be like for the next 40 days.

This February has 29 days, leap-year day is an unlucky day in Italian tradition. If a baby is born on Leap Year Day it is said that either the child or the mother will be dead within the year. OK, so maybe that was gloomy, but hey, it's Italian.