The Triumph of Death at Pisa and Premonitions

by Frank Cebulski


Formats

Hardcover
£28.95
Softcover
£11.95
Hardcover
£28.95

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 12/10/2023

Format : Hardcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 102
ISBN : 9798823012379
Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 102
ISBN : 9798823012362

About the Book

The famous frescos in the Campo Santo at Pisa painted in the 1340's include striking images of "The Triumph of Death," "The Devil," "Hell", and "The Last Judgement." The cemetery of the Campo Santo contains shiploads of earth imported from the Holy Land. The Campo Santo was damaged by Allied air strikes during World War II. The restoration of the frescos revealed the drawings beneath the frescos, which have also been meticulously and wonderully restored. I visited Pisa three times to see the Leaning Tower, which I climbed on my first visit, now no longer permitted. It was a dizzying and unbalanced experience, a feeling that produced new insights and ideas. At my home one evening rocking in my family rocker where my mother rocked and nursed her eight children, I almost lost my balance and tipped over backward, which made me think of The Leaning Tower of Pisa and Galileo's experiments with gravity there. I also remembered that Copernicus lived in a leaning tower. The opening passage of my poem reproduces the feeling of being out-of-balance. The "Premonitions" poems are fitting prophecies.


About the Author

Frank Cebulski is a San Francisco poet, translator, and art and book reviewer. His books of poetry are: "Corm" (Berkeley: Oyez, 1974), "Mediterranean Sonnets" (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1988), "Concrete Visual Shaped" (Berkeley: Light-Gravity Press, 2006), "Only Emotion Endures" (AuthorHouse, 2009), "The Fifth World" (AuthorHouse, 2010), "Lonely Nights & Wild Women" (AuthorHouse, 2011), "Love Songs for a Certain Age" (AuthorHouse, 2017), and "The Triumph of Death at Pisa and Premonitions," He is founder and owner of Light-Gravity Press, where he published various broadsides of his concrete, visual and shaped poems. He has translated poems from Latin and French, including "Eros Raving" (AuthorHouse, 2016) a translation of a complete book of poems by Denis Roche. He studied physics and English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and British and American literature at the universities of Cincinnati, California at Berkeley, and Kings College, London. He was Bancroft Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Fulbright Lecturer to France at the University of Metz. He was for thirty years contributing editor for "Artweek" and has written art criticism for "Art in America," "Sculpture,"and Examiner.com. He was the first Director of Technical and Professional Writing at San Francisco State University. To learn more about him and his poetry, visit his website at www.cebulski.net.