Livia Iacolare

Finally I moved to Milan and I’ve been hired by Current TV to work on the upcoming Italian edition (I’ll manage the Online department with other people). I have a lot of thoughts in my head, a hundred of new things to do and learn, a city to discover and a fantastic job to which I’m going to dedicate my energies. What else to say? Let’s get started.

Since I was in high school I’ve always enjoyed writing poems in ottava rima (my myth is the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto). I have written quite a lot of them (each one was about twelve-fifteen stanzas), mostly to please my friends. I also write sonnets and acrostics. I like poetry made of rhymes and syllables, whereas the greatest delight derives from finding the right balance between meter and style. I think this is a way to compensate my scarce knowledge of maths, since to many people writing in verses can be as difficult as solving an equation. I’m not a fan of free verses. They are too easy and if we exclude some notable exceptions, they are mostly lame expressions of poetry.

The real challenge, to me, is to use verses to create a perfect, flawless and defined space in which emotions and actions can be freely expressed. The modern meter (from the Middle Age to now) is based on the quantity of syllables, thus meaning that verses can be identified by the number of syllables they contain (e.g. the hendecasyllable). On the other hand, the ancient meter was even more complex, since it was based on the quality of syllables. It means that poets had to carefully select words with either long or short syllables according to their needs.

Isn’t it just amazing?

A dear friend pointed me to this image, which is really funny.
In my experience, though, the problem occurrs when your employer wants you to believe that she/he is allowing you full autonomy when in reality it’s the opposite.

Here’s the source.

One of the things that make me realize that I’ve spent a lot of time away from home is my toothbrush. I have two and one is always in my suitcase, ready to go. The other day I used the one I have at home and it was very very stiff. Suddenly I realized that I didn’t use it for two weeks. And it felt strange.

Don’t know what you think, but the thought of removing this thing scares me more than the thought of putting it inside.