| Title | : | Blackout |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1934639214 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781934639214 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 96 |
| Publication | : | First published May 16, 2017 |
Nanni Balestrini is the most significant writer of Italy's revolutionary period in the sixties and seventies, comparable only to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Blackout is the first book of his poetry available in English. Written immediately after he was indicted by Italian authorities and forced to flee, it has at its center the great New York blackout of 1977, a moment of chaos and panic, but also of mutual aid and social solidarity. This comes to stand in for the years from 1968–1979 in Italy, when a more or less open civil war between popular militants and the state escalated from strikes and riots to armed struggle. At once documentary and visionary, it is a poem of heroic and daily struggles for freedom, captured in heroic and daily language. It is a poem of popular revolt being crushed, a poem for our era as well as his.
Blackout Reviews
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Incantatory lines threaded through a dream - a revolution that never happened in '68 - but never ended in the future. Really a very interesting way to 'view' a time and place; while every reference made may not be understood by the reader (due to time and place) the overall movement of the work will sweep you away.
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I didn't care for the foreword, but the poetry is really powerful and packs a punch. It sets the stage for a lot of the struggles waged in the 60s and 70s not only in the U.S. and Europe but throughout the third world. I found the repetition almost haunting, a dark reminder of the looming threat of fascism and state violence.
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Reads Italian crackdown on operaismo alongside the 1977 NYC blackout
