Remember

I’m an Italian student and I’ve always found interesting that some of most prominent figures of the Beat movement are of Italian origin, such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Diane Di Prima. A lot of their poems refer to the Italian culture conveyed by their grandparents, a culture that slowly fades away as Ferlinghetti demonstrates in “The Old Italians dying” .

I found a beautiful poem by Diane Di Prima that invite us to remember some important people and events , also citing some Italian figures:

Memorial Day, 2003

Remember Sacco & Vanzetti
Remember Haymarket
Remember John Brown
Remember the slave revolts
Remember Malcolm
Remember Paracelsus
Remember Huey & Little Bobby Hutton
Remember Crazy Horse & Chief Joseph
Remember the Modoc & the Algonquin Nation
Remember Patrice Lumumba
Remember the dream of Africa
Remember Tina Modotti
Remember Makhnov & Tsvetaeva & Mayakovski, Essenin
yes, goddammit, even remember Trotsky

Hey, do you remember Hypatia?
Socrates? Giordano Bruno?
Remember my buddy, Esclarmonde de Foix
Remember Seton the Cosmopolite
Remember Edward Kelly, murdered in prison

Remember to take yr life back into yr hands
It's Memorial Day, remember
what you love
& do it - don't wait.

Remember life hangs by a thread --
anybody's life
& then remember the poets:
Shelley & Bob Kaufman

Remember Van Gogh & Pollock
Remember Amelia Earhart
Remember it's not a safe time & all the more reason
To do wholeheartedly what you have to do
Remember the women & men of Wounded Knee,
Kent State, remember where you stand:
in the midst of empire, & the Huns
are coming.

Remember Vercingetorix, Max Jacob
Apollinaire & Suhrawardi, remember

that all you need to remember is what you love
Remember to Marry the World

Diane Di Prima