Poet, activist, and new media artist Francesco Levato is the executive director of The Poetry Center of Chicago .
Levato is the author of Marginal State (Fractal Edge Press, 2006) and is a contributor to Witness:
Anthology of Poetry (Serengeti Press, 2004). His poetry has been published internationally in journals and anthologies, both in print and online, including Arabesques
Review, Citizen 32, Out of Line, Shark
Forum, Versal and many others. His awards include two consecutive poetry fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center. His poetry-based
video artwork has been shown at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and exhibited in galleries in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere.
Levato is a vocal advocate of using the arts as a form of political engagement
and social responsibility; he is founder of the Samizdat Series, a reading series
of socially engaged poetry, and is a founding editor of the online literary journal Ink & Ashes :: a journal of the senses. He has served as poetry editor or guest poetry
editor for LocusPoint, Newtopia, and others.
He maintains an active reading, film screening, and publication schedule both
in Chicago and abroad.
The Knotting of Rope
The Mechanics of Plastic
There is a point at which a material
under stress deforms, this elongation
at yield can be calculated, used
to push a specimen to the verge of rupture.
The art is in the bending, the controlled
application of force, with skill
a subject can be altered permanently,
made to take new form without
impairment of function, or bodily failure,
with proper tools the mechanics
can be easily tested, a pair of pliers
and a fingernail, or a chair made to bend
the reverse of the spine. Success
is not measured in fracture or asphyxiation,
but in the elongation at break, the point
at which the will can be strained no more.
- First published in Out of Line
For more poetry, or information about me or my book, Marginal State, please visit my web site: www.francescolevato.com .
