As some at LVAC are already aware, the co-op lost a longtime member, Mario Pietrantoni, on March 28, 2023. You can view his online obituary and sign the guestbook here.
As a new LVAC member I didn’t have a chance to get to know Mario, but the more I learn about him the more I wish that I did. He had a remarkable and, at times, brutally difficult life but the arts were his salvation, as he states in this short TVO documentary set in his studio.
A painter, author, sculptor, choral singer, activist and philosopher, Mario is remembered most vividly by his friends as a poet, and so I will share one of his recent poems here. Grazie, Mario. Riposa in pace.
Capturing the One
the one
who tells stories
when there is no ending
has a simple idea to create
a change that falls to a new
soul, where life intertwines with
a love story, its dreams evoked to
do quantum leaps. And this is
what I believe until you show me something
that can stop this story, which for centuries
has repeated itself. What a mystery there is
to days gone by as we find new ways to
look at the past, listen to all the songs
that sang about romance. It is the heart
that travels millions of miles just to reach
this passion as it roils exploring a
new world, coming into being to
share new ways in a life
so diverse within the desire
we expect from this
complex world.
In The Envoy: The Newsletter of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (eds. Lisa Makarchuk and Jorge Alberto Perez Hernandez), no. 95 (January 2020): 12.
As we prepare to celebrate the co-op's 30th anniversary, LVAC News welcomes remembrances of members who have recently passed or who left us longer ago. Let us know if you have memories you’d like to share at the email address below.
