Author: Rocco

Rocco is based in Toronto. He has been published in over 30 magazines and literary journals in Canada and abroad, including Descant, Queens Quarterly, Event and Canadian Literature. He has appeared on radio specials in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and New York City and has been commissioned to write poetry by the CBC. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the arts ezine, Latchkey.net, and is working on his third collection of poetry, "Everything is Still Burning: 20 Travel Poems." Another collection, published by Fooliar Press, is expected in the fall of 2005 Rocco has travelled much throughout Europe and Asia and Canada and all the places and experiences reflect in his writing. He has worked as a garbage man, a research reporter, a rickshaw driver, a hard labourer, and presently an English instructor for new Canadian immigrants. He has launched his website not only to promote his own poetry and art, but also to open an online venue for other artists like himself, struggling for an audience and a stake in a little immortality.

Other People’s Poetry

Posted on by Rocco

 
Language Event Two

 
Two Poets. Questions and answers are always independent.

(Suzanne Muzard, Andre Breton:)

 
What is a kiss?
A divagation, everything collapses.

 
What is daylight?
A naked woman bathing at nightfall.

 
What is exaltation?
It’s a blob of oil in a brook.

 
What are eyes?
The night watchman in a perfume factory.

 
What is hovering between Suzanne and me?
Great black threatening clouds.

 
What is a bed?
A fan quickly opened. The sound of a bird’s wing.

 

 

Translation from the French by Marcel Jean
From Poems of the Millenium, edited by
Jerome Rothenberge and Pierre Joris

Other People’s Poetry

Posted on by Rocco

 
The Dead In Frock Coats

 
In the corner of the living room was an album of unbearable photos,
many meters high and infinite minutes old,
over which everyone leaned
making fun of the dead in frock coats.

Then a worm began to chew the indifferent coats,
the pages, the inscriptions, and even the dust on the pictures.
The only thing it did not chew was the everlasting sob of life that broke
and broke from the pages.

 

 

Carlos Drummon de Andrade 1902 – 1988

August’s Top Five Vids

Posted on by Rocco

5. Phil Collins + Gorilla. Could it get any better than this?


 

4. I spoke too soon: Cookie Monster + Tom Waits. Now, this is fantastic.


 

3. For my exo-Toronto friends. KPMG is a huge multinational auditing/consulting/kitchen sink company, our new mayor hired to suggest ways to trim our budget. And surprise surprise, one of their suggestions was privatize some city services. And why not? Why should our tax dollars pay for unionized city workers when they could go towards unionized private workers! We’d save millions of cents! Anyhoo, in the following video, Councillor Vaughan asks about Melbourne, Australia, a city that also privatized some of its services. Listen for the dramatic punchline…


 

2. I mentioned this idea on Facebook a few weeks back. Take heed, vegerians, for the next time you invite over a meat-eater!


 

1. This is a beautiful clip from the movie Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, inspired by John Foster Wallace’s book of the same name. In the clip a man talks about his father working as a washroom attendant in a ritzy hotel. It really gets under your skin.