Author: Marc

I finally left Facebook (and deleted it!)

I did it. I beat the emotional extortion techniques of Meta and, after ten years of hemming and hawing, broke through the wall and ran for my freedom.

In reality, I was barely using it any longer, and my profile was just kind of floating there without posting much or even interacting with others (it’s all about the interactions, right?) I had stopped hitting ‘like’ buttons and emojis over a year ago, having determined that even such ephemeral signals were feeding the insatiable maw the raw meat of data it so craves. In short, deleting it was more of a formality than a major step.

I was helped along by a handy little post called “Guide to Leaving Facebook“, which gave me the necessary assist to take the final leap. This led me to a much more ambitious series of posts called the Opt-Out Project: Cleanse, which is far more ambitious than where I am at the moment, though I’m getting a lot of good ideas about how to break the chains of Big Tech from her posts. Step by step. I’ve left Amazon and Twitter and Facebook in the dust, so the sky’s the limit!

An inspirational and eye-opening book I’ve been reading is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Deep into the book, in a chapter called “How did they get away with it?”, Zuboff writes:

“The free services of Google, Facebook, and others appealed to the latent needs of second-modernity individuals seeking resources for effective life in an increasingly hostile institutional environment. Once bitten, the apple was irresistible. As surveillance capitalism spread across the internet, the means of social participation become coextensive with the means of behavioral modification. The exploitation of second-modernity needs that enabled surveillance capitalism from the start eventually imbued nearly every channel of social participation. Most people find it difficult to withdraw from these utilities, and many ponder if it is even possible.”

“Once bitten, the apple was irresistible.” Think about that sentence; it’s worthy of Henry James.

There is a beautiful sense of continuity to my story, as well. I first joined Facebook in 2008, just after Obama’s historic win, when social media and the Internet were seen as the future of an open democratic society. Eight years later, after living through the ‘fake news’ of Facebook’s newsfeed and the nonstop toxic arguing which characterized the 2016 election cycle, culminating in a full-reversal of the heady optimism of 2008, I was so disgusted that I suspended my account for a couple of years. Then I crept back in, slowly at first, though never to the level I had once used it. I felt like an alcoholic sipping a glass of wine with dinner—slightly risky. I never again read a piece of news on Facebook, and used it only to network with other writers and keep in touch with ‘friends’ I’d never otherwise have been in touch with. Only, they weren’t really friends and we weren’t really in touch, beyond the performative posting forum of Facebook. Once I was able to convince myself that I wouldn’t ‘lose’ anything or anyone (Meta gives it everything they’ve got, believe me, to get you to change your mind), it was easy. I symbolically timed my exit with the day before the 2026 midterms.

The euphoria of the blue tsunami was more enjoyable without it.

Ghazal for the Late, Great America 

Now that it’s officially voting season and ballots are being cast, I can share my latest publication, “Ghazal for the Late, Great America”, published a few weeks ago at One Art. I don’t write a ton of politically-themed poems these days, mostly because the themes are recurring (like a nightmare) and it’s hard to break new ground after a decade ice skating on cow pies. But I’ve recently fallen hard for the ghazal, and letting the form take me by the hand has perhaps broken the spell – at least for the duration of a single poem.

Ghazal for the Late, Great America

Gold leaf will not liberate you, America,
from this ten-year migraine. The hour is late, America.

The “shining city upon a hill” has doused
its lights to dusky. Not great, America.

All of those billions and still stuffing your face
with Big Macs? Your heart rate, America!

I read, It’s like being in bed with Jekyll and Hyde.
Only a masochist would date America.

The K-shaped economy: when the rich put on hoods
to slaughter the penniless. X-rated America.

The Pequod was melting pot, peppered with people—
your neighbor is your shipmate, America.

Stop blaming the tired, the hungry and poor
for your callowness, O third-rate America.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Locke walk into a bar—
Tom Paine was your true prophet, America.

***

My first attempt at a ghazal was this one.

Samuel Menashe at the Harvard Club!

Rooting around in an old file folder I came upon this note from a quarter-century ago. I don’t know how it has followed me for so long, but it was a pleasant little surprise to rediscover this quick handwritten note to myself about a poetry reading of Samuel’s I attended at the Harvard Club, which later inspired a poem. Dear Samuel is no longer with us, but he continues to haunt us in the gentlest of ways.

Read “Samuel Menashe Reads at the Harvard Club” (from Still Life with City, 2022)

Joseph Tusiani Italian Translation Prize Ceremony 2026

World Poetry Books has uploaded the full award ceremony to their YouTube page. You can hear lively discussion – in Italian and English – of Romanesco poetry in translation, the poetry of Mario dell’Arco in particular, and hear Dell’Arco’s poems read by his son, the distinguished historian of art and architecture Prof. Marcello Fagiolo (as well as my renderings in American English). The guests include a cornucopia of colleagues, family and friends from across the globe, making this a unique and memorable occasion. Ad maiora!

For more on Joseph Tusiani.

“As I Walked Out One Evening” by W. H. Auden, Read by Dylan Thomas

Dropping this here because it’s one of my favorite poems read by one of the best readers of poetry I know of. It’s like the poetic equivalent of hearing the Velvet Underground for the first time.

You can read Auden’s brilliant poem here.

Eight Poems by Mauro Marè

Yesterday was Rome’s 2779th birthday, and eight new translations of Romanesco poet Mauro Marè dropped in Issue 13 of World Poetry Review. There was no connection between the two events I can discern, though it was a nice coincidence. Here is the first of them, “Cutthroat Urbs” (“Bbojja nostrurbe” in the original). This poem is fairly indicative of one of Marè’s more prevalent later moods. I’ve attached the original poem below. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the sonnets of Gioachino Belli will notice the doubled consonants, a typographic hallmark of his work which Marè brings back in his later poems (and which had been ironed out of Romanesco verse since Belli’s day). This is the first poem of Marè’s that struck a chord with me and made me attempt a transation. That first line…

You can read more poems by Mauro Marè at One Art.

Day Lasts Forever at Trafika Europe Radio

I’m excited to share this episode of Trafika Europe Radio, in which host Clayton McKee generously offered me ample room to expound on the poetry of Mario dell’Arco and my experience putting together Day Lasts Forever. It’s mostly about translation, but there are a number of digressions in which I divulge something of the life and work of this master of the miniature, as well as the marvellous city of Rome which informed so much of his work.

The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia, a friend and early admirer of Dell’Arco’s work – and whose early work Dell’Arco promoted with his (at the time) much larger megaphone – called him the “quarto grande” – or ‘fourth great’ – of Romanesco poetry, after the more famous Belli, Pascarella and Trilussa. Towards the end of the interview we talk about the ‘fifth great’ (not Sciascia’s words but mine), Mauro Marè. Buon ascolto!

Four Years of War in Ukraine

This line from Timothy Snyder’s profound reflection on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s awful war in Ukraine struck me: An anniversary is an abstraction that separates us from responsibility. Read his full post here.

Solidarity comes in many forms. I write and translate poetry, and that is often how I think about what is happening in the world. Here are two poems I wrote about the invasion at the very start of the war. It may not be much but it’s what I have. May this terrible and unjust war end soon. Slava Ukraini!

from Rise Up Review

from Kitchen Table Quarterly

Resist.

Three Poems by Mauro Marè

Scipione, La Cortigiana Romana (1930)

The good folks at One Art have generously published the very first of my translations of Romanesco poet Mauro Marè. I’ve been working diligently on these since late last year, and it has so far been a much different experience than that of translating Mario dell’Arco. With Dell’Arco, each poem is a kind of gemstone and the translation is performed like microscopic cutting, polishing the edges until they gleam. My approach to Marè has so far been the opposite—basically diving into his vision headfirst and learning to swim or perish in the thrashing current of bold juxtapositionings and idiosyncratic neologisms. The above painting by Italian artist Scipione (1904-33) is the subject of one of his early efforts, “Mamma Roma”, an ekphrastic sonnet whose title echoes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1962 film of the same name. It hints at a Roman darkness and grotesqueness which Marè puts his finger on, especially in his later work of the ’80s and ’90s.

Marè’s publishing career was brief compared to Dell’Arco’s—a mere 20 years as opposed to the latter’s half century of dominance—but in his final decade he broke exciting new ground. It has been said to me by those in the know that Dell’Arco never once used a cuss word or profanity in his poetry. (If true, I am guilty of misrepresenting him in a single poem in which—inspired by Belli’s more profane moments—I put the ‘c’ word in the mouth of Santaccia, or St. Bad Girl, the infamous prostitute of Belli’s most gloriously dirty sonnets. [I justify my choice in a note on the poem, for those interested.]) In any case, Marè provides a jarring juxtaposition to Dell’Arco’s tame tongue, offering up a literal smorgasbord of romanaccio terms anyone with a passing familiarity with the Urbs will recognize: li mortacci tua, mmavvaffanculo, bbojja de mmerda, zzozzone etc…these are such colorful words, the verbal equivalent of Niki de Saint Phalle’s Shooting paintings, made by literally pointing a shotgun at her canvasses and blowing away pockets of colored paint. As a kid, I used to listen to my dad on the phone with his brother and sisters in Rome, and immediately grasped the unique lure of these interjections. They were my first words of Italian. Marè at times strings them together in zinging neologisms, the kind of thing one might hear from some drunk meandering though the streets at 2 a.m. cursing the world to the world: the bust driver, the Prime Minister, the Pope, all the way up to the throne of god.

There is a lot more to say about Marè and his poetry, which will surely be the subject of further posts.

See also: Two Poems by Crescenzo del Monte

Day Lasts Forever Wins the Joseph Tusiani Italian Translation Prize

I have an exciting bit of news to share – Day Lasts Forever has won the Joseph Tusiani Italian Translation Prize for 2024-25! Below is the official announcement. The book can be ordered directly from World Poetry Books, from your local, preferably independent, bookseller or from anywhere that sells quality poetry books. An excellent review of the book by Jason Gordy Walker can be found at Asymptote. Another, by Anna Aslanyan, can be found in the Times Literary Supplement. You can read selections of Mario dell’Arco’s poetry at On the Seawall, Bad Lilies, Apple Valley Review and One Art. For Mario dell’Arco’s 120th birthday celebration at the National Library in Rome, see this post. Thank you to everyone who has supported this project! More to come!