In one of her most fascinating poems, AUTOPSY REPORT 2.11.75, from the volume The Wooden Overcoat (1982), Katerina Gogou revisits the day when the Italian poet Pier Paolo Pasolini (he was certainly more than an ally to her) was found murdered on the beach at Ostia. In the blind spot of a surveillance camera — a poet no one fears is no poet — Gogou traces with anatomical precision the horrific injuries that led to his agonizing death. “His face disfigured by the framework of the class he denied / a black and blue volunteer of the ragtag proletariat. / The fingers of the left hand broken by social realism thrown away to floodlit trash. / The jaw broken / by the uppercut of a union organizer a hired thug. The ears chewed by asonofabitch / who couldn’t get an erection. / The neck broken and severed from the body on the basic principle of independent function.” In this kind of suffering register, she points out the parallel connection between the Vatican and the PCI (and their co-responsibility), which saw the homosexual poet as a nuisance, one finally silenced by his murderers of neo-capitalist cruelty.

AN EXCERPT FROM MY REVIEW KATERINA GOGOU “WHAT I’M AFRAID MOST OF ALL IS BECOME A POET”  (LANA TURNER JOURNAL 14)

KATERINA GOGOU | NOW LET’S SEE WHAT YOU’RE GONNA DO
POEMS 1978-2002
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