Blackout

by Nanni Balestrini, Peter Valente (Translation)

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. Nanni Balestrini , born in Milan in 1935, was member of the avant-garde literary movement Gruppo 63 with Eduardo Sanguinetti and Umberto Eco. He is the author of numerous books, including the novels The Unseen and We Want Everything , and his history of the movement of '77, L'orda d'oro (written with Sergio Bianchi). He lives in Rome. Peter Valente is the author of A Boy Asleep Under the Versions of Sandro Penna (Punctum Books, 2014) and the translator of numerous works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Antonin Artaud, and others. His translation of Artraud's late letters is forthcoming from City Lights.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Nanni Balestrini was an Italian experimental poet, author and visual artist of the Neoavanguardia movement.
Nanni Balestrini is associated with the Italian writers movement Neoavanguardia. He wrote for the magazine Il Verri, co-directed Alfabeta and was one of the Italian writers publishing 1961 in the anthology I Novissimi. During the 1960s, the group was growing and becoming the Gruppo 63, Balestrini was the editor of their publications. From 1962 to 1972, he was working for Feltrinelli, cooperating with the Marsilio publishers and editing some issues of the Cooperativa Scrittori.
Balestrini's political activities are also noteworthy: in 1968, he was co-founder of the group Potere operaio, in 1976 an important supporter of the Autonomia. In 1979, he was accused of membership in the guerilla and fled to Paris and later Germany.
Balestrini got known by a larger public thanks to his first novel in the beginning of the 1970s We Want Everything. It describes the struggles and conflicts in the car factory of FIAT. In the following years, the social movements of his time continued to be his subject. With the book The Unseen, he created a literary monument for the "Generation of 1977". It shows the atmosphere of rapid social change during this years, concretising in house occupations, the creation of free radios and more, and also shows the considerable repression by the state of these movements. Other important works are I Furiosi, dedicated to the football supporters culture of the AC Milan, and The Editor, dealing with Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. His non-fiction book The Golden Horde, co-written with Primo Moroni, deals with the complex nature of the Italian communist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[miss omissis]

la voce come uno strumento pulsionale dietro il quale esiste un intero universo di desideri

[Zach Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

you would like to ignore the consistency of the revolutionary so as to dream in peace

the proof is in this stupor

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads Italian crackdown on operaismo alongside the 1977 NYC blackout