The poets (eleven female, ten male) are Martina Abbondanza, Chiara Bernini, Marco Bini, Federica Bologna, Maria Borio, Giuseppe Carracchia, Clerey Celeste, Agostino Cornali, Marco Corsi, Noemi De Lisi, Alessandra Frison, Gianluca Fùrnari, Francesco Iannone, Eva Laudace, Maddalena Lotter, Luca Manes, Michela Monferrini, Ivonne Mossoni, Giuseppe Nibali, Giulia Rusconi, Stefano Visigalli; each is provided a concise introduction and is represented by 6-8 pages of verse.
Given the large number of poets, it is useful to organize our assessment in terms of certain nodal concentrations that are apparent in the length and breadth of the anthology: narrativity, the body, eros and love, the sense of place and landscape, and the cosmic connection between the past and future.
The narrativity of several of the poems exists in a hybrid form with the lyric, typically a poetic récit drawn from daily life or memory that encapsulates a truth best expressed in poetic form. Thus Manes recounts (with echoes of Pascoli) of meeting a stranger at a bus stop and speaking with her of sobbing heard in a passing car: “ ‘Lo sente quel pianto?’, domandai, / senza quasi farmi sentire. Non ci fu risposta, e il viale / tratenne la mancanza di vita. [...] Ma quel pianto! quel pianto! / quello strillare perché forse qualcosa attende, perché forse / non tutto è già deciso, non tutto è già concluso” (157). Visigalli – like Manes from Milan – employs narrative to situate the body in the urban space; personal episodes are transformed into truisms about life and history, emblems, visions and labyrinths: “ti ho consociuto come una lunga preghiera / ed ora non riesco a entrare nella notte: / questa volontà / mi inganna mi impone di sollevarmi di restare / dove il tuo salmo non arriva: / ti vorrà Dio così abile e ferita, sempre nuova” (202).
De Lisi is represented by a few sections of a “romanzo in versi” in progress (in which she adopts a male voice) centered on her family relations, the body and the figure of the mother: “Anche se eravamo giovani, i nostri corpi chiamavano i figli. / ‘Loro ci chiamano ma non dobbiamo sentirli’, ci dicevamo. / [...] / Solo l’urto del passo chiamava ancora i nostri figli e noi senza corpo / non potevamo muoverci, spaventati dal rumore del loro primo pianto.” (104).
Contiguous with this narrative focus is the foregrounding of the body, a theme present in the poets already mentioned and prominent in the verse of Celeste, Borio and Bologna. Celeste, a radiologist, conducts a meditation on illness from the standpoint of a direct witness, a clinician who builds an impassive exterior that cannot conceal an inner vulnerability to agony and loss; also intriguing in these lyrics is the presence of sea life and insects as a further manifestation of the living body. Borio writes a plain language of ordinary objects and sensations, rich in denoting the passage of time. The effect is one of purifying a language that has grown clichéd and commercialized: “le gerarchie più umane non si fanno / di acqua e luce, crescono / a volontà necessarie, / si alterano sui bisogni di pochi” (56). Among the human things that grow is eros, a silent presence underlying Borio’s verse. In Federica Bologna, the woman’s body manifests its solitude, its being taken for granted or neglected, its potential to be pregnant – a universal state of beatitude – and imagined encounters: “Se fossi un pesce ti nuoterei attorno / la mattina sarei sveglia da prima / per pettinarmi lavarmi la faccia / e tornare mentre stai fermo / ancora dormi nel letto” (48). Carracchia’s diaristic poems are centered on the death of the body, the tenuousness of life and the imperceptibile mysteries of aging: “Sull’anzianità avrei poco da dire / [...] / vorrei solo che l’intelligenza / si facesse più acuta, tagliente: / imparare a dire con meno parole / ciò ch’è d’obbligo / e il resto averlo già dimenticato” (68).
Another area of concentration is eros and familial love. In Rusconi the details of a tryst are recalled with diffidence and possess the same perfunctory character as other daily actions; there is also an air of sadness and uncertainty in her poems about an extended relationship: “Non c’è scampo al tono che usi / alla chiarezza dello sguardo alla voce / nitida che fa tremare il tavolo / su cui ceniamo da tre anni e le pareti / che ci hanno visti felici far / l’amore più di cento volte, / più di mille cercare le tue labbra” (197). One finds a similar melancholy in Bernini, where an intimate dialogic tension exists, within in a space of minimal gestures and (dis)courtesies with the lover: “Dopo la battaglia / ripresi i corpi e radunati i bottini / (che cosa resta è un mistero e cosa si fa / di un furto a un morto, dove comincia l’oro?)” (25). In Bernini the sense of personal loss (and its retention in memory) is palpable, as the passions are engaging on a metaphorical battlefield. Mussoni (one of the youngest poets in the anthology) writes a subtly understated love poetry: “Da me a te è diametro buono, / è il raggio d’azione che fa le stagioni / il grigio in cui l’ aria prepara la pioggia. / Se questa è la nostra distanza / non voglio niente di tutto ciò che illumina. / È al buio che lievita il pane” (177). Corsi’s poetry is expressionist and allusive, again centered on eros: “il collo si torcerà fra le mani / e io mi sarò ghigliottinato guardando la folla / incredulo, in preda al rondismo rivoluzionario / mentre tu, con le mani friabili / toccherai ancora la mia sorte / con l’amore indolente di dopo” (97). In the same general area of experimentation and love is Eva Laudace, but Laudace extends the love theme beyond eros in the direction of family, incorporating the language of fable in a psychological continuum with the figures of mother, sister, lover, child: “Non volevo più credere / alla nascita segreta delle cose / ma farmi madre / sentirmi pancia / partorirti / richiamare a batessimo la luce del Turchino…” (141). In a similar vein, Lotter’s poems present memories of childhood, reflections on one’s feminine instincts, anxious syntheses of one’s developing identity: “Forse a me manca una parte, pensavo, / nell’evoluzione della specie / essere ancora un po’ troppo animale, / che quando la luce viene meno / raddrizza l’orecchio / e, ridicolo, si gonfia come può / per fare la guardia a chi ama” (148).
Another thematic node of the anthology is the sense of place and landscape. For example, Cornali’s verse rotates around archaic toponomies and memories, as if vestigial or atavistic: small towns and localities, ancient timeworn practices, fossils that provide a provisional guide to the art of living; episodes with strangers, the substance of myths and superstitions. This sense of place as a connection to the past is present in Monferrini though now the signs legible in the landscape are less reassuring; one is suspended in uncertainty, as the urban space, the seaside and the space of myth are fused in a polysemic and phantasmatic space of wonder and menace: “Era inutile controllare la porta per tutta la notte. / Sarebbero – i fantasmi – arrivati per la cena, / bussando sotto al tavolo / per far tremare l’acqua nelle bottiglie verdi” (165). These poets of the local emphasize their relation with things as animated extensions of their beings. Thus Abbondanza writes plainly and modestly about evanescence and the passage of time, allowing the transcendent qualities of everyday objects to emerge: “Aspetto i bicchieri vuoti. / L’asfalto spaccato. / Volevo il tuo saluto / come un’assoluzione. / Invece ci sono tutti loro / che devono essere aspettati / ad un bivio di fiori” (21). Nibali’s poetry incorporates his Sicilian identity and sense of connectedness to nuclear and extended families into an evocation of traditions and ritual; there is also a liveliness that springs forth from the verse that is culturally unattached: “È un discorso d’esigenze / che presenti agli specchi / poi non entri poi / non urli la tua assenza. / Te ne vai e sciogli i capelli / saranno fiori / a qualche altra porta” (183). Iannone is a catholic poet who puts his faith forward as a beautiful testimony to a relationship with the divine: “Conosci la legge? / Se non canti / non avanzi non vai / da nessuna parte / se non stai / nel rigo accanto / al segno nel gesto / primario di un rapporto” (128).
A final area I have identified refers to temporalities in the distant past and the future, retrospective and projective visions of one’s ephemeral position in the cosmos. Fùrnari’s poems (from Vangelo elementare) are of this sort, referring in a secular manner to the Bible and the planetary past, the origins of the human race, and the current disposition of humanity as it endures violence and devastation: “così risponderemo noi all’annuncio, / ridaremo contegno ad ogni cosa / prima di seppellirla – neve, amori, / parole – lasceremo / il mondo dopo averlo fatto lucido: / / ma fissando il collasso, congelando / noi stessi dentro l’opera di luce” (122). Frison also writes in a retrospective and projective manner about the fleetingness of life, the fragmentation of consciousness and the persistence of loss; her voice is alluring because of its simplicity just as her language is grounded in gestures and concrete objects: “Non vi saprei dire nulla di me, / Anni che passano senza ricordi / piccoli gesti tra le mani / vuoti che stentano a dire come di noi / saranno dispersi anche i minimi segni” (110). In Bini’s linguistically complex and variegated poetry one perceives the world in its unpredictability and its exposure of living creatures to cosmic forces, resulting in a sense of wonder and peril: “Millenni di travaso e l’equilibrio / di un’unica palude dilagante: / in un sottomarino articolarsi / nostalgico dell’alba non c’è scoria / rimasta intatta al nostro dilavarci, / solo avanzi sommersi senza storia” (36).
This handsome anthology presents a unique constellation of poets of the new millennium, a group drawn together by a set of overlapping themes. The poets are armed by a discreet awareness of the legacy of the Italian Novecento, from which they borrow without descending in overt imitation. Many of them adopt a hybrid lyric-narrative form and seem to continue the Pascolian “poetica delle cose” as it passes through Gozzano, Montale, Giudici and beyond. In closing, it is the shared sense of craft and candor that draws one back to these poems, to reread them and appreciate their complex knitting together of the perennial themes of sickness and tragedy, love and happiness in a way that has overcome the excesses and atemporality of the postmodern and achieved a communicative and passionate, understated poetry suitable for this generation.
Thomas E. Peterson, University of Georgia