Vox Populi
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Joan E. Bauer: Dear Federico
Tonight, we’re watching Amarcord,
your dream-mix of homage, fable & satire.
The boisterous half-grown schoolboy Titta,
the fiery father, the long-suffering mother.
Not your true story, but surreal comedy.
Odd characters, much like your first humorous
columns in Rome’s bi-weekly Marc’Aurelio:
diva, handyman, maid, tobacconist, portrayed
with affection, alongside articles attacking France,
Roosevelt & the Jews. Fascist Italy, 1939.
Politics was never your province. Hard
to hate anyone, even the Blackshirts?
When Titta’s father is arrested, suspected
of broadcasting ‘The Internationale’
from the church tower to mock the Fascists,
he’s not killed, but forced to drink an oozy
flood of castor oil. Then the comic washdown.
True, the ocean liner Rex never sailed past
Rimini, your hometown, but each year, a bonfire
to celebrate winter’s end. The spoofing of priests
& schoolmasters, the gorgeous & gullible Grandisca.
I love this movie. The nymphomaniac, the crazy uncle.
The breath-stealing beauty of the snowfall, the peacock.
Was it Rossellini who urged you, Federico,
to become a director? A good job for a liar:
you have to pretend to know everything.
-----
Copyright 2022 Joan E. Bauer. First published in Main Street Rag.
Joan E. Bauer is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008) and The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021). For some years, she worked as a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
Vox Populi 
I never knew about Fellini’s journalism during the Fascist era. The poem captures the ambivalence I feel about another Mussolini supporter, Ezra Pound–an aesthetic adventurer from whom I’ve learned much, but the politics…ugh.
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This brought so many memories of the film back! How I loved it. An interesting take on Fellini as well. Inspires me to want to read more about him.
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Oh, yes, Fellini is the best!
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Superb poem! I might’ve added the ridiculous blue Visqueen ocean movie set, such great humor in that, I’ve never forgotten. So funny because there’s so much available real water and he did that. Too much!
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I love the scene in La Dolce Vita when Pan is dancing with Aphrodite…
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