These two chapbooks by the Italian poet Luigi Pasotelli (1926–1993) provide good examples of the concurrence of his particular text/visual/sound poetry practice. Seraglio consists of text generated directly from Pasotelli’s sound poetry. It was published in 1984 by the Dutch label Red Rat Recordings as a text accompaniment to three of Pasotelli’s sound poems (Taurus & Shampuina, Ratagura's Songs, and The Rat’s Ballad) released as Red Rat Recordings cassette number 044. The 8 1/2 x 11, spiral-bound text consists of 25 “phonovisual” poems, which are likewise the original scores of the recordings.

Rebus 1/25 was published in 1985 by Tam Tam, the Italian poetry magazine that Pasotelli worked on alongside Giulia Niccolai and Adriano Spatola, two of his frequent collaborators. Rebus 1/25 is a pamphlet consisting of 25 collages, each accompanied by a single-line poem. The collages appear to be rooted in a peculiar structuralism of Pasotelli’s invention, with cartographic and architectural elements suggesting, “an Archive of Symbols, a place that exists elsewhere” as Adriano Spatola writes in the introduction [...all’Archivio dei Simboli, un luogo che da qalche parte deve esistere]. Spatola also hints at mystical and occult influences at work throughout, “The writing… gives off the smell of sulfur” [Scritte...emanano odore di zolfo].

Special thanks to Joe Schmidt.

Download Rebus 1/25

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