SCARLET
“’A connection… lifted… into view.’ Levato’s SCARLET magnificently captures the withered yet still holding social and textual connections between us during the first years of the Covid 19 pandemic. Using language processing techniques like erasures and, more importantly, semi-erasures, Levato discovers networks between primary, subsidiary, and subterranean vocabularies and uses his discoveries to inscribe an apocalyptic yet all too necessary togetherness we grasped at during the terrible first months and years of the 2020s.” — Mark Nowak, author of Social Poetics
SCARLET, is a digital visual/poetic meditation on the psychological and physical toll of social isolation during the COVID-19 lockdown. The project documents the social, political, and personal disruption of the pandemic as society moved through its various mutations and surges. The digital/visual poems in the collection were created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life during the pandemic, with the poem titles being derived from objects contained in each glitched still life.
The book can be purchased from Amazon or the publisher at Spuyten Duyvil Press.
Excerpts of the project can be read in the following journals: FIVES: A Companion to Denver Quarterly, Matter, IceFloe Press: Pandemic Dispatches, The Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Experiment-O, The Conjuncture, Heavy Feather Review, FERAL, Scapegoat Review, Imposter, Harpy Hybrid Review, Train, The New Verse News, Unlost Journal, DISGUST: Unhealthy Practices, East Window Gallery, and Posit.
Arsenal/Sin Documentos
“Francesco Levato reveals the sinister undertow of the bureaucratic language in the American state’s enforcement codes. This is dystopian poetry, enmeshed with verbal machines of terror. Arsenal/Sin Documentos enacts a Promethium struggle to break free.” — Charles Bernstein, author of Near/Miss
“Here is the music saved from the savagery of “documentos.” Unearthing the lyric voice in the machinery of the state, from policies and protocols, Levato shows us that what is withheld is what is truly alive, the silence breathes.” — Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
“Francesco Levato’s Arsenal/Sin Documentos is a courageous book. More importantly, it is a necessary book. Every discourse is constructed with an intention, and this type of poetry demands a ruthless, fearless deconstruction of that discourse in order to reveal the truth.” — Gabino Iglesias, author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs
Available on Amazon
A Continuum of Force
A Continuum of Force is a selection of poems from a larger documentary poetics project that examines the material implications of Latin American otherness as constructed through U.S. policy, in the case of the poems collected here via the erasure of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Use of Force Policy, Guidelines and Procedures Handbook—a set of policies that discursively constructs a criminalized other while authorizing physical harm to that other.
“A Continuum of Force forges rich and brutal poetry from its source text, sparse but full of impact, with lines as sudden and decisive as the flashes of violence they describe.” — Andrew Rihn, co-author, with Donora A. Rihn, of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; An Election Cycle
Available at Moria Books
jettison/collapse
jettison/collapse is a mash-up of poetry, linguistics, and critical/cultural theory. Two streams of textual production form the mash-up: a series of linked poetic sequences composed through chance operations applied to appropriated source material, and a series of linked critical sidenotes; each interwoven and in dialogue with the other. The source texts range from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, and the collected works of Emily Dickinson, to discourses on aesthetics by Benedetto Croce and linguistics by Ferdinand De Saussure, to critical essays from the conflict between affectual and conceptual poetries by Calvin Bedient, Rachel Galvin, and Drew Gardner.
Available at Angel House Press.
Endless, Beautiful, Exact
A series of texts, remixed from appropriated oral and written source material, that explore interpersonal conflict through a fragmented and implied narrative. The author seems to have a clampdown on what he is willing to express, and what few words are allowed through are charged with emotion and tension.
Available at Argotist eBooks.
Click here to download.
Elegy for Dead Languages
Elegy for Dead Languages collects in print the long documentary poems War Rug; Elegy for Dead Languages; and Hood, Handgun, Power Drill.
“Francesco Levato’s powerful documentary, War Rug—like Eliot Weinberger’s What I heard about Iraq before it—detains the language of the perpetrators of global military aggression and redeploys it to indict them. From J.C. Penny catalog copy to counterintelligence manuals and autopsy reports, War Rug is a fierce yet unfortunate reminder of the absolute horrors of our age.” — Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary about War Rug
“In the poem War Rug, which was published by Broadsided last June, Chicago poet Francesco Levato explores the reality of living under a constant state of emergency, referencing the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded advisory system in juxtaposition with other common crisis shorthand. ‘Code Blue: no breathing / no heartbeat,’ he writes.” — Poets & Writers
Available at Marick Press.
Creaturing by Tiziano Fratus
“Francesco Levato’s translation into English of Tiziano Fratus’ collection Creaturing is stunning in its seemingly effortless and lyrically precise momentum. There is no question, this is an important collection and a most impressive and accomplished translation.” — Malena Mörling
“Tiziano Fratus is a passionate poet with a clear, distinct voice and a keen awareness that history opens the door of our future. We have much to learn from these engaged and engaging poems, much for which to be genuinely grateful.” — Sam Hamill
Fratus’ poetry explores what it means to be a young Italian poet today in the shadow of historical, cultural, and traditional forces. In Creaturing these tensions, archetypal, at once timeless and timely are brought to the fore in an unapologetic barrage on the senses.
Available at Marick Press.
War Rug
“Francesco Levato’s powerful documentary, War Rug—like Eliot Weinberger’s What I heard about Iraq before it—detains the language of the perpetrators of global military aggression and redeploys it to indict them. From J.C. Penny catalog copy to counterintelligence manuals and autopsy reports, War Rug is a fierce yet unfortunate reminder of the absolute horrors of our age.” —Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary
War Rug is a work of documentary poetics in the form of a book length poem. Multiple interwoven narratives explore life within zones of conflict as viewed through the lens of current warfare. The narratives range from passages inspired by journal entries, firsthand accounts, and news reports to poetic constructs collaged from military doctrine, Freedom of Information Act released government documents (like CIA interrogation manuals, and detainee autopsy reports), and numerous other sources.
This enhanced eBook contains the author’s notebook with hyperlinks to access additional content like books, web sites, audio, and video that inspired and informed the author’s creative process. It is distributed in Portable Document Format (PDF) and is viewable and printable on virtually any platform – Mac OS, Microsoft® Windows®, UNIX®, and many mobile platforms, including the Apple iPhone.
Available at Plastique Press.
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Marginal State
“Francesco Levato writes with an urgency that will pull the covers off your eyes and ears. He is another Ginsberg appealing to America’s soul. Wake Up! Here are twenty-one “hard” poems with a tenderness woven into lines of violence. The women in Levato’s poems are survivors. A blues tint shadows many of the pages of Marginal State. Levato’s urban silhouettes are memories waiting for morning light.” – E. Ethelbert Miller, director, African American Resource Center, Howard University
“These poems are hard to grapple with at times because they examine the familiar landmarks of our culture—advertising, television, Coca-Cola, patriotism—with a critical eye, juxtaposing our friendly constructions with the despair of poverty, the crippling loneliness of isolation, and the amoral machinery of capitalism. These poems … push us away from the center of our culture and make us question who we are when we strip away the half-truths we so readily live with.” – Todd Heldt, Before You Were a Prophet
“Sometimes Francesco Levato writes of common things in a most uncommonly touching way. Other times he writes of stunningly original insights and feelings in plain speak.” – Charlie Newman, deadmachinecity
“In Marginal State, Francesco Levato’s well-crafted and sensual poems take the reader on a courageous exploration through despair and isolation, from this country to Italy via England, then full circle back to America, and hope, by the collection’s end.” – Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Ph.D