The fabulous real-life fables of Ermanno Cavazzoni’s Brief Lives of Idiots portray “fools” who can’t recognize their own kin, miserably fail at suicide, or didn’t think the conc…

Plan BWe’re trundling down Via Balbipast palaces of glory and endless virtue.We’re fecund with children, we’re good at thatand some of us have rabbits in our pockets.We are fluent in sundry dialectsan…

The MothersFar from being goddesses or sibyls:the poor motherssuffering from migrainescrushed by the heart’s servitude. Dear LifeDear life,you chose colourless places,anonymous hours,the tritest…

Ascanio Celestini - "Fabbrica", Teatro Ambra Jovinelli, Rome, March 2007 Photo: Maila Iacovelli - Fabio Zayed/Spot the Difference  I have a technique.When I attend a meeting, I sit down…

When with my judgment I laymyself out to the tepid peace of every day,the docile afternoons, the wide and naturalsleep, no longer opposed to the climatethat equal and still caresses me instead– the cl…

A turkey-oak two hundred years old nowno one has pollarded. Beneath itthere live vipers – woody elbows acheagainst the back. And one nightupon the roots, you rebelled, and with such violenceas to rema…

in the wind they sowed their long phrases– like scarves they'd wave in the wind – the wind ripped many scarves by chanceand carried them away in frayed cloud shapes –the poet always scatters her…

Following the performance of her play Mary Stuart at the University of Oklahoma this Spring, Dacia Maraini invited the director, Susan Shaughnessy, and the actresses who performed t…