One's real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually, 'I like this book' or 'I don't like it', and what follows is a rationalization. But 'I like this book' is not, I think, a non-literary reaction; the non literary reaction is 'This book is on my side, and therefore I must discover merits in it.'
-- George Orwell, Writers and Leviathan, 1948

If you google Amarilli Caprio today, you can find a lot of new interesting and ridiculous stuff. The most surprising of all items is undoubtedly the one on the website of left-wing magazine il Diario, where is reproduced Amarilli's poem (about which I wrote the other day). What's surprising is that not only Amarilli's poem is reported as it is, and linked from the top of the home page, like it was a regular contribution to the magazine: as you can see in the picture, they also suggest to their readers to buy the anthology from which the poem is taken, and that's about all the comment they give to it.
Haven't they noticed that Amarilli's poem is, well, corny and, to put it bluntly, kind of sucks? I don't know, maybe the criteria to decide when a poem sucks are lost. And maybe it's a good thing.
Still. I've been saying myself that Amarilli Caprio, member of the Red Brigades and occasional poet, should be less obvious as a person because she writes poetry. But this doesn't make her poetry automatically interesting, right? Self standing? Only because she's a fucking terrorist?
And what about the good poets who aren't political activists, or criminals, or who don't have some other kind of equally unrelated quality about them?
I guess they're still expected to sign below the paper where on is indelibly printed "everything is politics": or some other similarly depressing indelible thought.

The Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been arrested near Brescia, in Italy.
He was strolling among courtyards and condos in the city, looking for his roots. One of his parents is supposed to be from Brescia (I don't know the story exactly).
Well, as it happens, the police spotted him, conspicuous old bearded man, mistaking him for an illegal immigrant, and turned him in.
He took it rather well, considering that after the incident he posed for a picture with the policemen. This short story is told in Italian by Ansa.
I would like to comment something sarcastic and cynic about the stupid Italian police and its fixation with immigrants. About the new global order of random persecutions and fear.
I would like to comment how it is all so ironic, anyway. After all, what Ferlinghetti was looking in Brescia, were the possible remaining traces of the past immigrations of his family.
Well, instead of prolonging this, I'll just end quoting few lines from a 2004 Ferlinghetti's poem.
It's part of the coda of "Totalitarian Democracy". Its entire version is readable on Citylights website.

Cut down cut down the alien corn
Cut down the crazy introverts
Tongue-tied lovers of the subjective
Cut down cut down the wild ones the wild spirits
The desert rats and monkey wrenchers
Easy riders and midnight cowboys in narco nirvanas
Cut down the wild alienated loners
Cut down cut down all those freaks and free thinkers
Wild-eyed poets with wandering minds
Soapbox agitators and curbstone philosophers
Far out weirdos and rappers
Stoned-out visionaries and peace-niks
Exiles in their own land!
O melting pot America!

* * update:
Ferlingetti tells this story to the NYTimes (November 6 2005).
After all he wasn't arrested. He was "only" kept standing for three quarters of hour by the policemen, after "very hostile" folks called them after him.
People from Brescia. What do you expect.
Here's a couple of lines from the interview:

They mistook you for a burglar?
There's a climate of fear and paranoia since 9/11, and in this country it was generated by Bush.
But you can't possibly blame President Bush for fear and paranoia in northern Italy.
It's the same with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Is it true that Bush believes that anyone caught reading books should be banned from government?
That's such a flaky, California thing to say.
I made it up.

Dear Ferlinghetti. Oh, I'm sorry so much. That hostile rudeness you endured has nothing to do with 9/11, Bush and Berlusconi - although 9/11 made everything worse-
That's just us, the Italian province, our pitiful stinking ignorance and mistrust.
I wish I was one of those policemen to read your name on the papers. I would have looked gravely at the hostile folks from Brescia and said to them: "This is a very important person. You are so screwed. I hereby order you to go and buy his books. Immediately! Get Pivano's translations! Marsch!".