A Week In Italy

This is a photo of the piazza in my mother's home town of Vestone in northern italy. If you see the words in the back, Albergo Italia, that is my family's Albergo which we owned from 1516 until 1994.

Whenever I go back to Vestone, the town where my family is from I always have a sense of deep rest. You see I was introduced to a sense when I lived in Bolivia that allowed me to find peace in my origins.

In Bolivia they always talked about their Ylakta o
or the land where their dead are buried as a mystical place a place of groundedness. I have always felt this way about Vestone. It is a small town and it is not the kind of romantic, warm place that so many imagine about Italy. But Vestone and the Valle Sabbia is where we are from it is our Ylakta.

As a poet we seem to always yearn for the innovative but I have always believed in Collage and the fact that we as poets should recombinate poetry and art into something new that is made from good strong material. So many poets try to put on aires and make themselves something they are not- but for me Vestone and its reality always sits over my poetry and makes me stay honest----