From Redefinition (Redefinizione)
[1]
in
the early
morning looking at the room surrounding the notebook he is astonished
how far
necks can rotate how eyes can move
this
since early childhood
when there were
needs we could not express
to cry was
to examine the real
head
rolled back
hands unable to
grasp
now that thought has no truth to question seen from darkness much of what he says actions we could perform are celluloid in an unlit projector certain situations have occurred somewhat unidentical to the first description provided there was a time we thought of ourselves at the centre
[2]
they
see
to it that we wonder if fainting is a dress rehearsal for death if the
box is
still there when i turn away
and we
find ourselves on the other side smelling the people in the corridor
before
departure eyelashes half-closed to the sea behind the door we see them
from
inside like the wings of an
insect
watching transparent placenta spheres in the
screen
if after all it’s true that the guy
sitting next to me always remembers to breathe if he thinks everything
is a
linear
relation
and if there’s
really somebody beyond the seat
inside
the phone behind
the counter and in the
wardrobe
under the stairs
among the dunes
waiting for food
[3]
The France Issue
Summer 2010
Poems
Alessandro De Francesco
Alessandro De Francesco (b. Pisa,
Italy,
1981) studied philosophy, literature and music in Pisa,
Paris and Berlin.
Lives in France.
Poet-in-residence at the European
Graduate School in
2008, contemporary poetry lecturer and
Ph.D.
candidate at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. The Italian-language
originals
of the texts presented here have appeared in Anterem
n.
77 (november 2008), Semicerchio, n.
37 (spring 2008) and Nazione
Indiana (2009). Other translations from Redefinition have appeared in Gradiva, OR and Fence, and in French in Nioques. Books:
Lo spostamento degli oggetti (Verona:
Cierre Grafica, 2008, with an afterword
by Martin Rueff), da 1000m
(www.gammm.org,
2009), Redéfinition (Paris: Mix, 2010), Redefinizione (Rome: La Camera Verde, forthcoming in November 2010).
From
2010: associate curator for literature and film at
Centre Pompidou, Visiting professor of Poetry and
Creative
Writing at University of Paris 4 - Sorbonne and Ecole Normale
Supérieure,
Paris.
Website: www.alessandrodefrancesco.net
English translations by the author and Noura Wedell
Noura Wedell (San
Francisco, 1972) is a
Franco-American writer and translator currently based in Lyon, France.
She published the book Odd Directions –
Direzioni dispari (Verona,
2009, translated and with an
introduction by
Alessandro De Francesco) and translated into English Babylon
Babies
by Maurice Dantec, The
Porcelain Workshop
by Toni Negri, Coma
by Pierre Guyotat, etc. Her poetry appears in the reviews Nioques, To,
Ere
online.
She is
Associate professor at Centre d'études poétiques, Ecole Normale
Supérieure
Lettres et Sciences Humaines in Lyon, France, where she teaches
American
contemporary poetry, Creative Writing and Critical Writing. Some
web-links:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog
http://metamitsu.blogspot.com
http://www.booksonboard.com