Lesser Titans by Salvatore Difalco

Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and author of five small press books, including Black Rabbit & Other Stories (Anvil Press). He currently lives in Toronto.

This is part of a group of poems I wrote in spring of 2023, after finally shaking off the Covid cobwebs and doldrums. I’d been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi in its original Italian, which is beautifully and austerely musical. At the same I was flipping through John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, a book of poetry I’ve always loved if not completely fathomed. Noodling around with pen and paper, infused by the lexicons of Ovid and Leopardi, and prepared to take a few fresh risks, I composed a bunch of these pseudo-mythic pieces, relying more on the lexicons themselves and a natural ordering of the words and rhythms rather than a strict adherence to the myths or classical tropes mined and reprocessed by Ovid or Leopardi. “Lesser Titans” is an example of this work, and one that I think succinctly represents my efforts with these poems.