What to read after Ruins?

Ruins gathers a series of writings in the form of verses, fragments, and short essays that Gabriele Tinti has dedicated to the “living sculpture of the actor”.

The poet moves from the tragic sense of death and vacuity which afflicts even those masterpieces we wish eternal, with the aim of giving new life and thought to Graeco-Roman statuary, to all those relics of a now-lost humanity. Through its many courses and varied ideas, the book explores a distinctive relationship with the ancient world, and with the very reasons behind the making of art.

This collection is the culmination of live readings by some of the best- known actors of our time (James Cosmo, Marton Csokas, Robert Davi, Abel Ferrara, Stephen Fry, Alessandro Haber, Malcolm McDowell, Jamie McShane, Joe Mantegna, Franco Nero, Vincent Piazza, Michele Placido and Kevin Spacey), all performed before important works of ancient art.

In this handsome book, Gabriele Tinti responds to Homer with craft and delight. But it’s not necessary to know the original to read and be engaged by these poems about history, heroism and the never-ending preoccupations of human meaning. Instead, like archaeological ruins, indeed, they stand complete, even as they sketch a past completeness that is, now, a far country.

–Fiona Sampson

Lending my voice to these poems on classical statuary made me feel in some ways a participant in the survival of such a profound, tragic and influential civilization as was the ancient.

–Franco Nero

The characters Gabriele Tinti draws from the Greek myths, the muses, the slaves, enable ‘the actor’ to inhabit the essential struggle of what it is to be human, like a Noh play, doomed to repetition and the transcendence gained from it, to be human under the burning sun, which both gives life and destroys...

–Marton Csokas

...To be able to put a poetic voice to timeless art is a noble enterprise and I applaud Gabriele in his pursuit of educating and entertaining the public at large with this project, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

–Joe Mantegna

I find great joy reading the work of Tinti.  He carefully combs the work of ancients revealing our indelible humanity.

–Vincent Piazza