Daniela Ripetti Pacchini: Biography 2025

 

Daniela Ripetti (full surname: Ripetti Pacchini) is an Italian poet and writer. She worked as a psychologist and psychotherapist and collaborated with various national newspapers and magazines. In earlier years, she was active in theater, performing in Italy and France with Carmelo Bene. During her university studies and professional training, she lived primarely in Rome until the early 1980s, when, a serious illness led her to return to her hometown of Pisa.

 As a poet, her verses have been published in literary magazines and journals  including: “Nuovi Argomenti”, “Guida Poetica Italiana”, “ClanDestino”, “Quinta Generazione”, the Mexican cultural magazine “Altiplano” in Spanish translation, the international journal of contemporary literature “The Literary Review” (Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1985) in English translation by Pier Francesco Paolini, Her work is referenced in the books Twentieth-century Italian Literature (1929-1997) in English Translation, by Robin Healey (1998) and Italian Literature since 1900 (1929-2016) in English Translation by Robin Healey (2019).

Her poetry is also featured in Italian anthologies and collections such as Poeti Italiani al 2° Festival Internazionale dei Poeti (1980), Letteratura degli anni Ottanta edited by Filippo Bettini, Mario Lunetta, Francesco Muzzioli (1985), La poesia nel Lazio edited by Fausto Pellecchia (1988), Il Romanzo di Castelporziano edited by Simone Carella, Paola Febbraro, Simona Barberini (2015). Regarding the reading and performance at the avant-garde theater Beat 72 in 1977, see Il poeta postumo by Franco Cordelli published by Lerici, 1978 and by Le Lettere, 2008.

A miscellany of her poems Dei trapassati intendimenti – Poems for three Festivals and three Concerts with a preface by Alberto Moravia was published in 1982-83. It collects verses taken from various collections, written and performed between 1974 and 1981. 

In 1992, Forum/ Quinta Generazione published a new collection of her poems composed from 1981 onwards, entitled Marcia della prudenza 1981 with a preface by Giampaolo Piccari.

Una giovinezza rubata-Memorie di Guerra Fredda, a volume between history and memory also including several poems by the author, was published by Book&Company in 2019.

A vast miscellany of poems by Daniela Ripetti in Italian and English entitled La poesia e il suo Doppio (Poetry and its Double) was published by EdiPsy (Psychodream) in 2021.The book contains compositions written from 1967 to 2016, including the complete collection Apache tear (1981-1994) with a preface by Romano Luperini. There are also some prose pieces and various critical notes.

In 2022, Transeuropa published her plaquette of verses entitled Poesia-Phoenix, the same publisher also published her new collection Addio Roma e altre poesie (Goodbye Rome and other poems), released in November 2024.

 In her absence, her verses were read by other actresses and actors (Maria Luisa Bene, Luigi Mezzanotte, Giuliana Adezio, Giovannella De Luca, etc.). At the International Poetry Meeting in Roma Festival Mediterranea, Rome 2010, her poems were read by Cloris Brosca. Not being able to participate in various cultural events, since 2011 Daniela Ripetti, in addition to writing on this blog, publishes some videos with her writings on the two YouTube channels "skindapsos" and "ilvelobarocco":

https://www.youtube.com/user/skindapsos 

https://www.youtube.com/user/ilvelobarocco 

Several of her writings of various kinds can also be found on academia.edu at the following link: https://independent.academia.edu/DanielaRipettiPacchini 

https://independent.academia.edu/DRipettiPacchini

 PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: Daniela Ripetti Pacchini graduated with honors in Psychology (supervisor Prof. Giovanni Jervis) at the University of Rome and specialized in Psychotherapy. As a psychologist-psychotherapist her interests and writings have mainly concerned the phenomenology of consciousness in its multiple trans-formations (altered and/or alternative states, peak experience, hypnosis, etc.), mass psychology, psychopolitics, sport psychology and the multiple strategies to facilitate and regulate psychobiological processes and transitions, the changes in micro and macro systems.

She has worked as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist with an Ericksonian-systemic approach and has collaborated with the CONI, the FIDAL. and FITARCO as a mental coach for elite athletes, but also in basic sporting activity. As long as her health conditions allowed it, she held lessons, seminars and workshops on Sport Psychology and on the strategies for change adopted. 

Publications: Attività motoria, rilassamento e sviluppo, CONI Ed. Pisa1985; Milton H. Erickson e Wilhelm Reich: affinità e differenze in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Ipnosi e Terapia della famiglia (Roma 1985), Ed. L’Antologia 1987; Evoluzione del setting terapeutico e della teoria della terapia attraverso l’analisi caratteriale reichiana, “Giornale Storico di Psicologia Dinamica”, 1986, 19; L’uso di strategie ipnotiche e autoregolative nell’emofilia in Atti del Seminario L’Attività sportiva degli emofilici, Pisa 1987; Nuovi orientamenti nell’applicazione di tecniche autoregolative allo Sport, in La psicologia dell’atleta (a cura di M. Guicciardi e A. Salvini) Ed. Giuffré, Milano 1988; Ipnosi e approccio multimodale nelle gare di lunga durata, “Rivista italiana di Ipnosi” (organo Ufficiale dell’AMISI) 1989, 3; Il training mentale del fondista, “Atletica Studi” Roma 1989, 4 ; Il training mentale del fondista, in Psicologia e Sport (a cura di F. Carbone e D. Luparelli) Ed. La Casa Uscher, Firenze1991; Strategie autoregolative e peak performances, in Atletica Studi, Roma 1991,5; Peak performance e ipnosi in Ipnosi Oggi, Ed. AMISI 1991; Strategie autoregolative e peak performance, “Movimento” , Sett.Dic.1993, Vol.9,3.

 

                                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_TLBaZFFxo 

 

POEMS

THE DANCING SPIRIT OF THE ART

 

Notes…words…rest in a grave

if there is not an instrument

to breathe them

if there is not a dancer

to dance them

and light their fire 

under the ashes of their quietude…

ON MOVING TOWARDS

 

On moving towards

the centre of my lightness

when only the colour of the sky

marks the mutations of my inner being

and the shining ascensions

on the black pale ocean                                                                       

impale and burn

in sparkling flashes of Black…

 

Thus, I feel

in the changing tingles and blocks of my body

between sky and ocean

in a light rippling of the sheet…

YER BLUES

 

Then the lights quietly rest

as if by pretense

so, we do not rest

like strangers in our memories

finding other times among eucalypti

and magnolias…

unknown muses were flowers

that died soon after birth – memories

are not always true, yet more true,

more beautiful than themselves

they caress the vast deserts

    between thought and thought.

Our temperaments caught a vague sense of dawn,

and what else?

All time was constantly slipping away from us…

“This looks like mourning” we were reading.

CAMPO DE’ FIORI (Roma 1975)

 

We went shopping by mistake

that morning

you bought half the market

put a fresh little onion in my mouth

and a rose at my belt.

Then, drunk, you dragged along

falling yellow flowers,

yellow petals

decked your unredeemed soul  

a long carpet of flower feathers

behind you…

And how people marvelled at you

how baffled they trailed your passing

under the supreme gaze of Bruno 

who what others saw from afar, 

he left far behind him.

 

You tasted of whisky – wine – gay melancholy

of beautiful, fearful adventures.

  

BYGONE ENCHANTMENTS

 

There is not in any place

a place,

where our conflicts

where the false and the true

our Gods cease, with death

and everything returns

to a new beginning

to marry the dawn...

 

For thus we pass away

before saying an uninterrupted "Yes"

Ground level is our highest heaven

and at the idea of looking at it

at the idea of touching it 

we are already lost. 

TOWARDS THE MAREMMA

As all the voids are saturated    

I am impervious to dust

and to all cold, unbreathable

atmospheres…

 

Had I become now

a single solid ancient clod

were the Maremma now

my definitive soul...

were life now

  the center of my life,

a sort of rarefied life, imbued

with salt and water

water table of the earth. 

*

………………………………….

but dust returns

to confuse the face

sirens and changes

of the hyperuranium-terraqueous

claws and nails

of the already millennia gone

palimpsests grayed by inexhaustible

rainbows.

 

ARIEL (the spirit of air)

    To my daughter

 

When I’m not so attentive to the word

and pass between the lines

like a nova star

then maybe I'll live you in the right note

and you will no longer be unknown to me.

My verses about you

resemble life so much

that they stun me on contact...

It seems as if I am dumb

before your cheerful flesh,

yet, I made your flesh, sprite of the air.                                                                      

              

You know not how much

everything of you I feel

like a prod that lasts

eternally, in my tired bark.

I no longer find the words that

rediscovering rhyme or blank verse,

free the form into the possible...

 

Perhaps, beyond this wasted time

flattering ourselves with hopes,

there is a golden ratio in life

which arises as invisible music

and reveals the Paradise of the meantime. 

MORAVIA AND THE NEED FOR POETRY

"Perhaps poetry is recognized above all in the ability 

to stop at the threshold of the sayable"¹

You loved poetry

and you worried about it

you, master of prose and logical clarity,

you, who found me too passionate,

too concentrated on the multiple

universes of Delmas.²

 

“You move away from poetry, like this”

 you said anxiously

       and I counter-sang:

"The brain is wider than the sky..." ³

“deeper than the sea” Emily versified,

but you knew how the world of poetry 

is not just made up of verses.

 

You, tempted to write poetry,

with your narrative metres 

hidden among disturbing phanthoms

in your luminous clarity…

you had a great need of that living water

which flows right there where

the sayable stops.

 

¹ From the preface written by Alberto Moravia in 1982 to my first book of verses Dei trapassati intendimenti: “Perhaps poetry is recognized above all in the ability to stop at the threshold of the sayable…”

² I refer to the French anatomist André Delmas and his text Vie e centri nervosi, one of the texts I was studying during the period when I was attending Moravia.

³ Emily Dickinson, the author of the two verses cited.

HSÜ (The Wait)

 Drained of life

in sideranemic waits

drained by waiting

as the norm fades

no form remains

no living soul,

but a mobile, slight rustle

of leaves, that cradles and

 shadows my departure,

long marked 

by expulsion orders.

Author’s Note on Hsü 

The poem Hsü (The Wait) belongs to my collection Apache Tear, written between 1981 and the late 1980s. Compared to the other poems included in this publication—composed at different times—Hsü stands out for its strong existential imprint and its connection to a specific historical and personal moment. Written during a period marked by the collapse of grand ideological narratives and the disintegration of modernity, Hsü reflects the Stimmung of those years: a cold vertigo, a sideral wait, a loss of narrative cohesion. Layered onto this cultural condition was a physical one—an exhausting form of anemia that forced me to leave Rome and return to my hometown of Pisa. Hsü is also the reflection of a more intimate and silent crisis: that of the body, where biological normativity dissolves into a displasia that foreshadows a malignant disease In this sense, the poem traces an invisible transformation, acting deep within, altering form and presence. The poem thus arises from a double exile—ideological and corporeal—and should be read in this light and in this darkness. It does not seek explanation, but offers itself as a trace of suspension, of a wait that drains and empties, leaving only the slight rustle of leaves.

LUCENTE TENEBRÌA

Φωτεινό σκοτάδι

(Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa, 1987)

 

Or for the morning’s bright darkness 
leaving joyful traces
in the slanted flight of swallows,
or for the holy obscurity
of the grief – that surrounds me
and within me I nurture and shun
as a living sign of these times...

In an uncertain age
of sunsets of the West,
this dawn is impudent
  like rejoicing on Ash Wednesday

Φωτεινό σκοτάδι

OBSCURITÉ BRILLANTE

(Hôpital Santa Chiara de Pisa, 1987)

 

Ou pour la brume lumineuse du matin

qui trace des vestiges joyeux

dans le vol oblique des hirondelles,

ou pour la sainte obscurité

du chagrin – qui m'entoure

et que je cultive et fuis en moi,

comme un signe vivant des temps…

En une époque maladroite

au déclin des soleils de l'Occident,

cette aube est impudente

comme une fête dans les Cendres. 

OBSCURITÉ BRILLANTE  (Hôpital Santa Chiara de Pise, 1987) French version 2

Ou pour la brume brillante qui, matinale,/ trace des vestiges joyeux /dans le vol oblique des hirondelles, / ou pour la sainte ténèbre du mal / qui m’entoure et que je cultive et fuis en moi,/ comme un signe vivant des temps…/ En une époque maladroite de couchers de soleil d’Occident, / cette Aube est impudent /comme une fête dans les Cendres.

 

 EXULTET 

(O Vere Beata Nox...)

 

O truly Blessed Night

you pass and pass over the chalices

      in blood and manna...

you pass and find the sober cell

all inebriated,

and through the Exultet you sing

        of Cross and Hosanna.

Empty time, yet full,

that fills the jars with the nectar of wine,

where there is cracking and extinguishing

you ignite the white lily

and the reddish rose of the wild.

Sweet time,

though very harsh,

amidst this Levantine curfew

you unveil the moon

pregnant with eternal sun,

whose fullness we fail to grasp. 

BROTHER FRANCIS

(To the first Italian poet)

 

From the leaves,

from the soft pointed

scalloped edges of leaves,

from the vaults,

from plumages in love,

from embroidered wings,

from the downward flights

of falling leaves,

from the tiny worlds

along gravel paths in the evening

from the strokes of moonlight

 on thorn thickets,

from suns and from winters

among wolves and cliffs,

from fire, from water, from wind, ⁴

and for the Small Ones,

precious and humble…

You called Him – He called you, ⁵

     with living words,

and even the dreadful scowl of Death

    seemed sweet to you.

 

 

⁴ The words “focu” (fire), “uento” (wind), and “pretiosi et hùmeli” (precious and humble) are written, in the Italian version of the poem, in early Umbrian vernacular—the language of St. Francis. Their poetic resonance is untranslatable into English.

⁵ This verse alludes to the "mutual inhaesio" between St. Francis and his God. That is, it refers to the mystical mutual indwelling between St. Francis and God—a spiritual union where each resides in the other.

And finally, an excerpt (also translated by me) from the poem “Addio” in Elsa Morante's Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini (The World Saved by kids): "One can protest with indignation against certain trashy and infamous commercial press that, for profit, insults the memory of Poets with biographical gossip”.

 

 

Performance del 1974 da Virus e altre prosodie di Daniela Ripetti. Ultime scene: Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini