Orvieto
()
About this ebook
William Anselmi
William Anselmi has published (with co-author Kosta Gouliamos) Mediating Culture (1994), Elusive Margins (1998), and Happy Slaves (2005), all with Guernica.
Related to Orvieto
Related ebooks
Ox-Eye Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrow Speak-Wild Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIlluminations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Book of Fours Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelf Help: A Guide for the Retiring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNight Street Repairs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn The Event Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHandmade Boats Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDancing, with Mirrors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMessages from the Bees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExhale, Exhale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea and Sardinia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPast Tense Future Imperfect Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Zebra Stood in the Night Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsapologetic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShaking the Persimmon Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems - Laurence Hutchman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSharawadji Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Oscillations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSun and Moon, Light and Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Taste of River Water: new and selected poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twist and Knot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElastic Glue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngel Hill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman Who Drank Her Reflection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dwelling of Weather Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecular Games Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouwesto Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Europe Travel For You
Learn French With Short Stories - The Adventures of Clara Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Family and Other Animals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Corfu Trilogy: My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; and The Garden of the Gods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Watchers: A thrilling Gothic horror soon to be a major motion picture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unlocking Spanish with Paul Noble Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mastering Spanish Words: Increase Your Vocabulary with Over 3000 Spanish Words in Context Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Huckleberry Finn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Notes from a Small Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn Spanish : How To Learn Spanish Fast In Just 168 Hours (7 Days) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lysistrata Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North: How to Live Scandinavian Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hate Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Microadventures: Local Discoveries for Great Escapes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frommer's Scotland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParis Letters: A Travel Memoir about Art, Writing, and Finding Love in Paris Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy Learning Italian Conversation: Trusted support for learning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Everything Travel Guide to Ireland: From Dublin to Galway and Cork to Donegal - a complete guide to the Emerald Isle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirds, Beasts and Relatives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy Learning French Conversation: Trusted support for learning Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related categories
Reviews for Orvieto
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Orvieto - William Anselmi
WILLIAM ANSELMI
ORVIETO
URBS VETUS
CITIES SERIES 4
GUERNICA
Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)
2009
Angela, Ezio – 1957 . . .
ORVIETO
Gaze down, swooping towards Orvieto
From a distance, and under the Gemini sun, Orvieto is a narrative, an island written in the tuff. In the tuff, names, work, heroes and failures are entwined like the vines of a dream. There is no respite in the Umbrian valley that surrounds it, everything is a reflection. Only February with its fog licking its way through the lines of a face can still the lips, and suddenly time is inconsequential.
Yet to turn away would it not take away from each bitten cherry a few seconds, from each burst of juices the pulp of a story? Would you not want to stop, high on the hill past the cemetery, and consider how human flight becomes a leap of wrath in front of you?
Stand there. Orvieto is straight ahead in the air. Each curve of the road, descending for kilometers, until a temporary level is reached, just past the cypresses and the tombs, ascending, curve after curve, left and right, until the city door is trespassed: breath of asphalt then apnea. Stand there, Orvieto is in the distance. Breathe, calmly. There stands Orvieto in the distance. Who is flying today, here, from La Rupe?
Delightful Gianna. Overhead a plane, silver hyphen glittering against the sparse clouds. No cosy traveller, harbour of an elsewhere, will be able to recount Gianna’s flight trajectory today. Perhaps Luca Signorelli will, but he has her commodiously atop an infernal being, with the wings of a bat and horns of a goat. She is stuck in the Call of the Elect’s final, painful depiction. Notice how Hell is reflected in his sardonic gaze, as he holds his place above the damned souls.
Here goes Gianna, throwing herself over the short tuff wall. See her crush in a confusion of bones near the paved road. Hardly aesthetic, the little fleshy puddles against the overwhelming grey of a road bound by yellow lines. She is not the last of a long sequence in the Malediction of the Tuff. The body of this sixteen year old, comical in its reach is invisible. Flying has this magic: it hides the points of a compass with a sweeping motion. No tree or bush is harmed in this flight. No taste altered or farmed.
Later, the gravel, the grass and the sullen gods will quickly absorb the shadow there. A dash of rain will complete the task so that others might follow, so that one more Icarus will point to the sky and substitute the sun by twist of arm. Give me honey and wax, baby.
Everything is still. Everyone is asleep tonight. No tippy toes will do, no breath withheld, no dull tongue, no candle. Fangs: to sink as fast as the wink of the inner eye. The pulse slowly skips a beat. Orvieto is a sea of lights. No moon atop the concave stop. Each eye dazzled by an inner glow.