SOURCE: "Pasolini: His Poems, His Body," in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall/Winter, 1983-Spring/Summer, 1984, pp. 103-26.

In the following excerpt, Ahern demonstrates how Pasolini 's "whole poetic career can be seen as a doomed struggle with the violence of poetic language. "

It is easy to forget that Pier Paolo Pasolini is a major poet. Between 1950 and his death in 1975 he published four volumes of vigorous criticism—social, political, cultural, linguistic, and literary. Some of these pieces, just a few years after newspaper publication, have already found their way into anthologies. He wrote or directed over two dozen compelling, highly personal movies. He translated Aeschylus and Plautus, and wrote four plays of his own. He edited two anthologies of poetry in Italian dialects. He produced two linguistically remarkable novels. Given the bulk of his work and the notoriety of his life and death, it is easy...