Poet gunned down in 50-year-old vendetta

These things never happen to poets. Only in Sardinia. Amazing story. Try casting Philip Larkin in the role instead, or Wallace Stevens, just for fun. He was shot six times. That's more than Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson put together. 

The Sardinian poet Peppino Marotto did not seem a likely target for a cold-blooded assassination. The 82-year-old was well known and much loved on his native island for his poetic portrayal of peasants, shepherds and brigands, scrupulously written in Sardinian dialect.

But after he was shot repeatedly on Saturday, residents of his home town of Orgosolo, an isolated town tucked into the Sardinian hills, whispered that Marotto may have been the victim of a vendetta dating back half a century, part of a tradition of feuds and banditry that many believed had long since vanished from the Mediterranean island.

50-year-old vendetta suspected in killing of Sardinian poet, 82 | News | Guardian Unlimited Books