My writing has been described as romantic, in the vein of Keats. It’s been described as hermetic, in the vein of the Italian symbolists, and indeed my poetry reflects this greatly, and perhaps my Italian roots; my father is from Rome, where Keats was laid to rest, his name writ on water.

I simply belong, I believe—or so I like to think—to an older tradition; I am a writer, who, like Keats and the Romans, believes in beauty above all else, all of its many iterations, and by these I do not mean anything superficial, a facade, a veneer. To read my work—I hope—is to better understand what Beauty is. To write—fiction, nonfiction, poetry—is my attempt to better understand it myself.  

The Glassblower, Kyoto Journal. Illus. Venantius J. Pinto.

Ultimately: labels, categories, genres…they help sort through data, organize things, market it, but do little to really divulge an artist and their practice. Discussing inspiration is far better…. 

I walk in the footsteps, or perhaps write in the wake of the romantics and the symbolists, as noted above. But also authors like Ursula Le Guin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, and Haruki Murakami. Authors who, like me, understand that the world of dreams and reality are not entirely separate; who, like me, write along the line where they blur, bleed together. I could extend this to mean other worlds as well, all of which make up our own: our various heavens and hells; the imagination; the stories we tell and inhabit, including memory, mythology…. 

I am similarly inspired by the esoteric works of Han Kang, the crisp minimalism of Yasunari Kawabata, the sultry, robust prose of his controversial friend, Yukio Mishima, the naturalism and spirituality of Hermann Hesse, and the Biblical harrowings of Cormac McCarthy. 

I read widely and wildly, as I believe one should. All of my various encounters—with literature, art, artists, and people from all walks of life—help inform my aesthetic and the stories I tell, including the one I’m telling, and all those I hope to tell.

My novel(s)-in-progress, like all these selections, are exemplary of my aesthetic; a distillation of my ethos; an exploration of Beauty, yes, along with the most powerful and timeless human sentiments and experiences, all of which are in some way related to Beauty, and thus one another: love, longing, guilt, shame….

Hermetic and lyrical, with a "classical fire" Iit by the likes of Giuseppe Ungaretti, Salvatore Quasimodo, and Eugenio Montale, my poetry can feel obscure. But with it, I hope to challenge the trend of colloquialism and timeliness, a catering towards ease above all else. I hope to celebrate timelessness and the traditions that built the best of us; that sustains us through every dark age. At the same time, to challenge the reader, slow them and life down, have their initial impression—whatever it may be—open to awe upon a deeper reading of anything they deem beautiful, upon a delving into themselves; art should always act, if not as fire, than as a spark.

My eyes, gateways, they say, to the soul, are dilated       revealing only flesh.

Organs heave,             blood pumps, nerves twitch,

beckoning touch;

innumerable peepholes of gaping pores

—this humidity thick—

tell nothing more.

Ultimately, aware of the history of the Italian Novecento, of all those poets and artists—of so many movements—who found themselves swayed by—or forced to support—hateful ideologies, I wish to bring back the best my predecessors at one point embodied. Rather than replicate, I aim to reinterpret, harnessing my unique lens—a millenial, an Italian-American, a progressive, socially and politically—to express my distinct voice and spirit.

As an editor, I specialize in art books and the art-related short-form: essays, biographies, walkthroughs, etc. Books I have worked on have often been reprinted, and even won some awards: The Art of Startups, which I edited and ghost-wrote, was a Finalist in the Financial Times’ 2019 Bracken Bower Prize.

With projects like Max ID NY: A Decade of Works, I hoped—as I did with all those projects I was editing as part of Counterpoint Literary—I hoped