Crito Di Volta: an epic

by Marc Saverio

Overview

When 26-year old Crito Di Volta is released after 10 years of psychiatric institutionalization, he develops and launches Mortarismo—a new socio-political, psycho-spiritual, artistic movement— with the aim of deinstitutionalizing, and eventually reconnecting with, all of humanity. Called a work of genius and a poem that exceeds Allen Ginsberg's Howl in both authenticity and intensity, di Saverio’s epic Crito Di Volta is a strong pronouncement on civil rights, religion and art; and a daring revolt against the platitudes of contemporary Western society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771835213
Publisher:	Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2020
Series:	Essential Poets series , #275
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

In Issue 92 of Canadian Notes and Queries Magazine, Marc Di Di Saverio’s Sanatorium Songs (2013) was hailed as "the greatest poetry debut from the past 25 years." In 2016 he received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2017, his work was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, his debut became a best seller in both Canada and the United States, and he published his first book of translations: Ship of Gold: The Essential Poems of Emile Nelligan.

Editorial Reviews

"Crito di Volta is the astonishing prophecy of a turn in our direction, from present-day triviality and self-contempt to a new life of imaginative joy and the superb energy of peace, the one true energy. “We must wake soon, or sleep unto our deaths,” the poem cries. And elsewhere, it sings the cure, “It is harder for the unloved to love, so let us love the unloved the most...” Marc di Saverio has somehow brought forth a culture-creating epic which at the same time is the imaginative biography of the suffering outcast of our time, of his family, his loved ones, and the world he loves, and also of what threatens these loves: our blind yet willful self-defeat. A prophecy, an epic, but also a novel in verse (and prose! and pictures!), a gallery of portraits, a fountain of images. A powerful unity of purpose within a harmonized kaleidoscope of new forms, both free and structured. Crito Di Volta is a work of genius, a completely original mastery of the art of poetry. Perhaps Di Saverio’s poem is most of all a white-hot fusing of love and anger, tenderness and brutal honesty, realism and hope, analytical insight and soaring vision. Or perhaps above all, Crito di Volta is a treasure-house of beauty: “And her vermilion hair, / curved along her forehead like an ancient sword, / quavered.” Or perhaps above all it is a quest and achievement of love on every page, as it embraces “black gleams of distance / and dolour that I too share in loving her.” —A. F. Moritz On every page of Crito Di Volta


"Marc Di Saverio stands in the everlasting 'emergency present' and sings with deep, authentic intensity and poetic force 'the melody-lines of people’s veins' -- and in so doing offers up an electrical, irrefutable masterpiece." —Russell Thornton


"Crito di Volta is a battle cry to break from our vaults, seize this time as ours, and steer our lives in a new direction with authentic, passionate poetry." —Margo LaPierre, Ottawa Review of Books

From the Publisher