Empty Buildings – Night in New York. Arthur Coleman

Illuminated by plane-warning floodlights,
clouds wisp past the tops of tall buildings
whose insides are empty of life at this hour.

Walled-in halls and rooms sectioned into
squares leveled stories upon stories above
ground, fixed as firmly as centenarian
trees by their grappled root structures,

are dark and unseen, though lit ambiently
by light that has somehow crept like vine
up the walls and through the atmosphere,
compressed into substance by the flat rigidity
between walls, so windowed they are sheer

glass cliffs, shooting off the translucid
streets, blackened by recent rains; and
the red and green day-glo of exit signs
perennially pointing down cavernous
evacuation routes that are the conduits

whose night-long drafts whisper the
empty buildings’ seething potentiality.

A close examination of a broken eggshell. Arthur Coleman

The object that fell through a tear in the awning
and softly smacked hitting the ground is half of

a bluish green eggshell spotted with brown and black
smudged matter of the mother bird’s patient incubation.

The edges where it broke open are jagged and the surface
that sustained the impact is cracked yet still intact.

Inside, chinks in the white are stained with watery
blood and albumen goo, smelling overbearingly of birth.

Barking mad

A group led by an Italian lawyer has begun collecting signatures for a petition to nominate Mr Berlusconi for the Nobel Peace Prize on the ground that because of his close links to Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, he helped to resolve the conflict over Georgia last summer.

Giammario Battaglia said that no Italian had won the Nobel Peace Prize since Ernesto Teodoro Moneta in 1907. He added that in view of Mr Berlusconi’s achievement, “we think it’s a good moment”.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6433541.ece

Mister B. Zgia

was that?
Berluschitler
Berlustalin
Francusconi
Berluşescu
right hand in lapel
Berluscoleon
or some very Roman heritage
builder + imperium
the citizen a little more equal
a larger than life
Berluscolini

but then
is it not the little Silvio
in each of us
the fairy-tale “selva”
a forest
a jungle all to ourselves
where anything’s possible
where the whim of
the fortune-maker
rules every little world
Berlusconismo
that seeps
creeps
and corners
the last crevice
of every single day

was that
cuckoo in the nest
liar
shammer
card-sharper
fiddler
rigger
Berluscon man

(the word bears
no longer importance)

Silvio Berlusconi attacks press for defamation over unanswered questions. Richard Owen

Silvio Berlusconi has launched a fierce attack on La Repubblica, accusing the newspaper of defamation and denigration after it challenged him to explain his relationship with Noemi Letizia, the teenager who calls him Papi.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s office said that there was a media campaign against Mr Berlusconi, 72, fuelled by “envy and hatred of a Prime Minister who has achieved historic levels of public trust”.

Berlusconi’s Frighteningly Successful Racism. Adetola Lawal

Two days after the United States Presidential Election, Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, said to the President of Russia President-elect Barack Obama “has all the qualities to get along well with you: he’s young, handsome and suntanned, so I think you can develop a good working relationship.” This statement was harshly rebuked by Italian politicians as being racist. Berlusconi’s opponent in the last Italian election, Walter Veltroni, went far enough to say that his comments “seriously damage the image and dignity of our country on the international scene.” Unfortunately for Italy, this statement is insignificant compared to the racism rampant in the Italian government and population at large. The Roma (Gypsy) are an ethnic group that emigrated from South Asia to many countries primarily in Southern and Eastern Europe almost a millennium ago. For many centuries, Europeans have been at odds with the Roma community due to their cultural differences and physical appearances. The Roma have experienced injustices for centuries including losing their children, suffering discrimination, and even being forced into labor.

The Trapeze Artist

The Trapeze Artist is a new play by Paul Bilic opening at Tara arts Theatre Studio on April 22 and running on April 22, 24, 28, 30, May 2, 4, 6, 8 at 7.30. It tells the story of how Kafka’s manuscripts ended up in Oxford, which is where they are housed to this day. At Kafka’s death in 1924 his close friend Max Brod was supposed to burn all his remaining manuscripts, but Brod disobeyed Kafka’s request and published them. Brod took the manucripts with him when he fled Prague on the final train before the Nazis moved in. He kept them in Palestine until 1956 when Marianna Steiner, Kafka’s niece, returned them to Europe where she had them housed in a bank vault in Zurich. A chance encounter between Michael Steiner, Marianna’s son and a student at Oxford, and Malcolm Pasley, an Oxford German don, in 1961 meant that Pasley contacted Marianna Steiner and was given permission to drive the manuscripts across the alps and house them at the Bodleian library Oxford.

‘The Trapeze artist’ , directed by Hannah Pantin, takes this story and splices it in with ‘ First Suffering’ one of Kafka’s shorter fictions, to produce an original and physical piece of theatre. On April 28 Michael Steiner, Kafka’s nephew now in his late 60s, will be attending the performance. For more information visit www.tara-arts.co.uk

www.northernrenaissance.org

The Journal of the Northern Renaissance (www.northernrenaissance.org) is a new peer-reviewed, open-access online journal dedicated to the study of early modern Northern European cultural production. The journal will be alert to the full variety of early modern cultural practice, publishing articles on literature, the visual arts, philosophy, theology, political theory and the scientific technologies of the Northern Renaissance. It places a special emphasis upon interrogating the Southern European derivation of our inherited paradigms and delineating the significance of alternative cultural geographies. Although it is anticipated that attention will converge upon the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the journal is particularly open to attempts both to challenge existing periodizations of the Renaissance in the North and to establish continuities with earlier and later epochs.

How Silvio Berlusconi Became Italy’s Superman. Alexander Smoltczyk

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,druck-612909,00.html

Who is Silvio Berlusconi part 6