When the news came to me last week that Santo Cazzatti had died, I could barely believe it. I had seen him literally the day before at the crossing at Northcote station, in that great fake fur coat of his. And I had seen him, I think, the day before that on the seats at Clifton Hill Station, perhaps avoiding seeing me back. We always seemed to be meeting on public transport; he would often talk a mile a minute to cover up embarrassing silences. We talked of classical music: Schumann, Wagner, Bach, Larry Sitsky’s views on free form atonalism versus the twelve tone serial method described by Schönberg (and if you know what that means, good for you).
Perhaps one of my clearest memories of Santo – and of the whole Melbourne performance poetry scenes – happened at the beginning of one of the Passionate Tongues poetry nights, run by Michael Reynolds. Santo was always an amazing and original performance poet, but on this occasion he was performing a cover, a piece by Komninos about - exactly what you think it is about:In the hustle and bustle of ball and muscle
Of suck and fuck and pubic gyroovic…
And, just as he attained a crescendo in the climactic final passage, Komninos, who had just arrived, bellowed out from across the back bar in chorus:
And Santo was a fire: a fire of inspiration, in his brightest moments he blazed his way through the Melbourne poetry scene. By 2020, that fire had all but ebbed away. These were years full of recriminations, self-exiles from some, then gradually all, of the poetry venues. I know he was thinking of poetry and music in that time: he mentioned to me a few times plans for smaller sessions with keyboard and poetry at his house. He performed online over the course of the lockdowns, small poems and piano pieces. Over time I have no doubt the fire of inspiration would return, but it seems that time was not on his side.
A fire of musical and poetic inspiration as he was, he also wanted to be a fire for the revolution, the spark that would see socialism sweep across the entire world. I don’t know whether he ever truly understood what such a violent overthrow of power would do with him, if it ever happened. The Marxist revolution, like the end of the world, is something always just over the horizon, a ‘consummation devoutly to be wished’. Though Santo could expound learnedly about the finer parts of Marxism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, I think the appeal for him really was almost religious, an emotional substitute for the conservative Catholicism of his early years. Once I remember remarking to him that the more a piece is politically committed, the less the poem becomes. Santo replied that he wanted nothing more than to be a writer of agit prop, a poetic ideologue for the revolution.
(Another public transport conversation I recall from our early acquaintance:
SANTO: Oh, Lexi is a leftist, is she? What kind of leftist?
ME: Um… ah… she’s… I guess she’s a Fabian.
SANTO: OH, one of THOSE.
When I relayed this conversation to Lexi afterwards, she just laughed and replied: ‘You should have just said I was vegetarian!’)
He was first a performance pianist, and then a DJ. For many years he taught piano. It was I think at Passionate Tongues that Santo first discovered spoken word poetry: maybe this was in 2005 or 2006. I have a recording somewhere of some Passionate Tongues poets from that time, and Santo’s piece, an excellent send up of Dr Seuss, always sticks in my mind: ‘Rupertle McMurdoch the Turtle’. It was at that time that he adopted the name ‘Santo Cazzatti’ – it stuck, being a perfect stage name. In Santo’s first tongue of Italian, it is actually a blasphemy combined with a swear word, if those two things are really any different.
The hallmark of Santo’s style was always an impeccable musicality. His poetry could be chanted and sung, but I never saw it written down – in fact, I think he had a rule against allowing his poetry to be seen in publications. So intricate were the rhythms of his verse that I strongly suspect he used musical notation when writing his poems down, however. He would often chant pieces in a tango or Rhumba rhythm. Once, I remember he sang on stage at the Dan, to the tune of that old Broadway piece ‘Downtown’:
At the venue Under the Hammer, the better part of a decade ago, he staged his own funeral. For that occasion I remember hastily improvising a poem on his own assumed identity – Santo Cazzatti. Ranto Danceparty. Fanta Man Smarty. The poem just wrote itself. (I stand by all of those descriptions – Santo really was all that.) Annie Solah MCd, vigorously shouting the translation of Santo’s Italian name – ‘Saint FUCK!’ – into the microphone. The whole event (and Santo’s set) concluded with Santo rising, renewed, reborn, before the audience.
Did Santo feel rejected at the end? He saw his volunteer work at 3CR almost as a kind of archivist; he wanted to make a living record of all the voices in Melbourne poetry in the present day. He interviewed so many of us. I remember when he interviewed me he played filler pieces of his own – not exactly poetry, not exactly music, kind of scat singing with a Latin dance feel. Was that egotistical of him? I actually loved it. I never heard it again. So many pieces of Santo were like this, actually – you heard them once and never again, but they made an indelible impression on you.
And – the piece of his that made the deepest impression on me, his self-styled ‘performance poetry opera’, titled ‘All that is solid melts into air’, which I saw in its entirety at the Dan. It was extraordinary, set in Northcote Shopping Plaza, interspersed with baudy farcical scenes about relations between different storeholders in a shabby temple of suburban capitalism. (He later told me it was based on a Ravel opera). You can bet I applauded long and loud at the end, and I vividly remember Santo, the diva, the teacher, gesturing to the audience: thank you, now it is yours. I give this to you, this poem, opera, this new genre. Make something of it.
Hilarious. Infuriating. Generous. The Saint of Melbourne poetry. Can he be truly gone? We should all pray for him. If he’s in heaven, it will annoy him hugely and give him something to argue with us about when we get there.
In the eyes of desire, I see… FIRE!Many poets would not like being joined in like this, but I do believe Santo – notwithstanding the fact that he could be something of a prima donna, asking, when featuring, for the audience ‘not to applaud between poems’ – was delighted. This was the passion he wanted, spoken word poetry turned operatic. It showed his generosity and modesty, his acknowledgment that he came before many other brilliant performance poets, and after him would come many more. He was brilliantly, fiercely original – but also part of a tradition.
I see… FIRE!
And I see love.
And Santo was a fire: a fire of inspiration, in his brightest moments he blazed his way through the Melbourne poetry scene. By 2020, that fire had all but ebbed away. These were years full of recriminations, self-exiles from some, then gradually all, of the poetry venues. I know he was thinking of poetry and music in that time: he mentioned to me a few times plans for smaller sessions with keyboard and poetry at his house. He performed online over the course of the lockdowns, small poems and piano pieces. Over time I have no doubt the fire of inspiration would return, but it seems that time was not on his side.
A fire of musical and poetic inspiration as he was, he also wanted to be a fire for the revolution, the spark that would see socialism sweep across the entire world. I don’t know whether he ever truly understood what such a violent overthrow of power would do with him, if it ever happened. The Marxist revolution, like the end of the world, is something always just over the horizon, a ‘consummation devoutly to be wished’. Though Santo could expound learnedly about the finer parts of Marxism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, I think the appeal for him really was almost religious, an emotional substitute for the conservative Catholicism of his early years. Once I remember remarking to him that the more a piece is politically committed, the less the poem becomes. Santo replied that he wanted nothing more than to be a writer of agit prop, a poetic ideologue for the revolution.
(Another public transport conversation I recall from our early acquaintance:
SANTO: Oh, Lexi is a leftist, is she? What kind of leftist?
ME: Um… ah… she’s… I guess she’s a Fabian.
SANTO: OH, one of THOSE.
When I relayed this conversation to Lexi afterwards, she just laughed and replied: ‘You should have just said I was vegetarian!’)
He was first a performance pianist, and then a DJ. For many years he taught piano. It was I think at Passionate Tongues that Santo first discovered spoken word poetry: maybe this was in 2005 or 2006. I have a recording somewhere of some Passionate Tongues poets from that time, and Santo’s piece, an excellent send up of Dr Seuss, always sticks in my mind: ‘Rupertle McMurdoch the Turtle’. It was at that time that he adopted the name ‘Santo Cazzatti’ – it stuck, being a perfect stage name. In Santo’s first tongue of Italian, it is actually a blasphemy combined with a swear word, if those two things are really any different.
The hallmark of Santo’s style was always an impeccable musicality. His poetry could be chanted and sung, but I never saw it written down – in fact, I think he had a rule against allowing his poetry to be seen in publications. So intricate were the rhythms of his verse that I strongly suspect he used musical notation when writing his poems down, however. He would often chant pieces in a tango or Rhumba rhythm. Once, I remember he sang on stage at the Dan, to the tune of that old Broadway piece ‘Downtown’:
Why am I so PEE SHY!And there, aside from the music, you had in one his flair for being both dramatic and startlingly vulnerable, all at once.
Why am I so PEE SHY!
At the venue Under the Hammer, the better part of a decade ago, he staged his own funeral. For that occasion I remember hastily improvising a poem on his own assumed identity – Santo Cazzatti. Ranto Danceparty. Fanta Man Smarty. The poem just wrote itself. (I stand by all of those descriptions – Santo really was all that.) Annie Solah MCd, vigorously shouting the translation of Santo’s Italian name – ‘Saint FUCK!’ – into the microphone. The whole event (and Santo’s set) concluded with Santo rising, renewed, reborn, before the audience.
Did Santo feel rejected at the end? He saw his volunteer work at 3CR almost as a kind of archivist; he wanted to make a living record of all the voices in Melbourne poetry in the present day. He interviewed so many of us. I remember when he interviewed me he played filler pieces of his own – not exactly poetry, not exactly music, kind of scat singing with a Latin dance feel. Was that egotistical of him? I actually loved it. I never heard it again. So many pieces of Santo were like this, actually – you heard them once and never again, but they made an indelible impression on you.
And – the piece of his that made the deepest impression on me, his self-styled ‘performance poetry opera’, titled ‘All that is solid melts into air’, which I saw in its entirety at the Dan. It was extraordinary, set in Northcote Shopping Plaza, interspersed with baudy farcical scenes about relations between different storeholders in a shabby temple of suburban capitalism. (He later told me it was based on a Ravel opera). You can bet I applauded long and loud at the end, and I vividly remember Santo, the diva, the teacher, gesturing to the audience: thank you, now it is yours. I give this to you, this poem, opera, this new genre. Make something of it.
Hilarious. Infuriating. Generous. The Saint of Melbourne poetry. Can he be truly gone? We should all pray for him. If he’s in heaven, it will annoy him hugely and give him something to argue with us about when we get there.
