"E sia", an essential but immense title, taken from the most hermetic of syllogues. A perfect title in the sober graphics of the elegant and simple cover - ivory white edged with gray lozenges -, which embodies the primordial and primordial power of resilience. It grants and imposes, it is surrender and challenge ... A splinter of saving poetry to cling to so as not to sink into the abyss of night, waiting for dawn.
Liquid fire flows in this work by Grazia Procino - her second, precious poetic summit printed in the summer by the publisher Luciano Ladolfi and beautifully reviewed by Giulio Greco - which will be presented at Santeramo in Colle at 18.30 on October 15th "G. Colonna". Professor Stefania Santelia of the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Bari will talk with the author, focusing on her poetry and the beauty of Poetry, and an exponent of the House of Women of the Mediterranean.
The words of "E sia" overwhelm and upset, flowing impetuously into the riverbed of a classicism appeased by the intimate knowledge of Greek literature. They swirl between the whirlwinds of the senses, survive the dangers of the song of reason, the call of safe harbors of savory quiet. It is torment that gives them life, poised between the provocations of the contemporary and archaic paradigms of architecture that are reflected in timeless symmetries.
An example? "The Eden is here luxuriant with senses. / The touch of the hands is / ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy", the fourth of the poetic branches of Bacchic rites. And again in "Elegy of the no man's land", precious insert in the pages of "Stories of women and men", "The border between tears and kisses / is the land that I do not want to cross ...".
"Mystery" rituals on the border between passion and spirituality in which pain with assertiveness goes beyond space and time, between the torment of senses drunk with desire and the sympathy to which reason is denied.
In this spiral of thoughts that drags on with lucidity in the darkest depths of the soul, the search for truth, the guiding star and muse of poets of all times, exerts an irresistible appeal. Immerse yourself where every awareness settles and then go up and let the words gush clear, giving the verses a very dense specific weight that does not scratch its lightness and beauty.
I HAVE A POPPY ON THE EDGES / OF AN ASPHALT AT THE TAR ..
The initial exergue "I poppy at the edges / of a tar asphalt", for Giulio Greco an "oxymoronic enigma of nobility or confession of solitude", evokes the ephemeral beauty of a delicate flower that in its short life gives oblivion, on the edge of the asphalt, as well as poetry on the fringes of reality, it conditions it giving it beauty ...
Even more than an oxymoron, a metaphor of life, of its transience, of delicate and at the same time brazen seduction that only this flower can express. A red shiver in the wind, bloomed by chance on the border between the flowing life and the nothingness of a handful of earth. Silky wings moved by the wind caress the black seed of oblivion on the edge of reality and, eating little, they soften the dryness of the brushwood that invades that poetic segment of existence.
In the prologue and between "Heaven and earth" the myths of Odysseus and Prometheus anchor the verses to a past of unprecedented actuality. Penelope could have opposed her destiny, anchored in hope.
"I thought during the flip side / of the unraveling of the universe" in the expectation "of new odyssey that" renounce the immortality / proud of its ephemeral finiteness. "
And the poetess is attracted by the finiteness of death, intended as an extreme change to explore new dimensions intertwined in a spiral that Giulio Greco reveals and translates into a "seamless blend of three elements: classicism, an instrument for understanding reality, the bewilderment of the present, the narration of a love ", which" unite, divide, complete, mislead and run parallel ... "expressing themselves in a variety of languages," eloquent glimmers of meaning, clear vocabulary, supervised and solemn syntax. .. "
DREAMS MUST BE DEFENSE ...
The boundary between past and present is often subtle. The one touches the other blurring the boundaries, creating sharing portals for flows of emotions that flow from a single source and then jagged into a thousand and thousand rivulets.
In "Mater dolorosa" a great truth: "Dreams must be defended, / but when they go beyond / the limits of a betrayed nature / they bear incalculable damages."
There is an ancient wisdom in words, which bears the imprint of classical steps, sediments of dramaturgical, theatrical, poetic beauty coming from the passions which the poet feeds on and which she dispenses every day to her students.
Grazia finds in the past answers to the existential questions of the present, her thread of Arianna is love.
"I have a life limited to your hugs / lapping at my hips / docile no more insolent" and in the poem "adhesions of souls / in vacant spaces" while "the syllables of love leaped over the eyes / lips / found warm and enveloping asylum . "
Orpheus and Eurydice are here "in spaces of compassion", to remember how important it is, when love is lost, to regain it by loving "the world even when it comes against me."
"Your eyes speak to me / in the silent grammar that we know / your sleep surrendered in my embrace / makes me mother of my love ...", verses in dark light of rare beauty to describe love in "The Vigil" , dedicated to those who "do not know" of love that waves high "because" ... everyone lacks something ".
STONE ITS HEART AND SOUL MAKES DESERT ...
Not only in a harvest, in intimate silence, but in the voices of the choirs and in the recitals that this book should be listened to, remiging between past and present, between tragedies and news, intercepting the first tomato picker in the Puglia region in the first tonight that " makes his heart stone and the soul renders deserted ”between the indifference of that humanitas who flees, a prelude to death.
A dip in the present, in the problems of illegal hiring, in fatigue, in the lack of respect for rights yesterday as today. Grazia Procino does not renounce denouncing the present in the climax of Latin lyricism. The reference to Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis is not accidental: the happiness that it causes in other pain, one can only live or give it up, in which case no one will take care of his gesture. But freedom has a price.
The theme of solitude touches on the metaphysical ... "Since men no longer dialogue with the gods, they fight fiery demons in their minds, live free / but submit to the ravenous / moira face with impeccable / perfect face / with black lacquered fingers" .
Verses of intense dramaturgy, to be heard in the theater, recited within a choreography in which past and present merge, to then be divided into segments of beauty.
The Humanitas - we read - and fled with her all the values, no more oracles, love confined to memories as Euridice mythological figure that evokes abandonment, silence, melancholy ...
"It is" - writes Giulio Greek - has the structure of a greek tragedy, opens with a prologue unfolds in his score with stasimi sung by the choir and monodies and ends with an epilogue. The author goes in search del'antica mother, Greece, the origin of culture and Western civilization, to uncover the shadowy wedge of contemporaneity, the brutal and terrible truth that goes, however, he looked into her eyes to savor the essence of being entirely men. "
From the Roots to Odysseus, from Prometheus to the earth, from the burning asphalt, symbol of derelict cities and of flight without return, to the dramatic Sybil's aphasia, incapable of predicting the future of a humanity without a future, from Oedipus that "... spreads with the rough hands / secrets of a man who could not defeat oracles and "E sia", when "... we cling to everything / not to sink into it / even in the night", humanity is revealed in all its more intimate secret.
In choosing the titles that mark this poetic journey, a thoughtful search for meaning.
"Finally a party", "The heart under dirty shoes", "For every sleeping country of Italy" where "... the ritual flayed by the brown sun foresees / the religious listening of the wind ...", and again "Epigraph", "To the friend waiting to be healed" and "Ruina" to ask questions that can upset ... "we thought we were men, / we were wrecked shattered by the song of the Sirens, because in the end temptations shatter us and we lose ourselves" and finally "Living Stones", where "Silences delimit spaces in everyday life" ...
Not a simple book, but the verse story of a humanity that traverses the present on its way to the future, with a look to the past. A precious and unmissable work!
BACK TO THE PRESENT
A year full of emotions, success and satisfaction that Grazia Procino experienced. After the important recognition given to "Soffi di nuvole", a finalist in two sections and awarded the Special Prize "Onirica" on September 21 in the section of the book published by the National Poetika Prize 2019, the one of October 15 is the first autumnal literary appointment that the protagonist will be the poetess Gioie, engaged more often in the other side, or in presenting authors in school projects.
A 2019 that Ipoet saw in January of Lietocolle, with a poem selected by the poet Vittorino Curci and published in the spring on the Republic of Bari. In June the poet Maurizio Cucchi chose to publish one of his poems on the Republic of Milan, while in February, at his debut with the prose, he published a collection of stories "Stories of women and men" at Quaderni Edizioni which is giving her so many satisfactions.
"We must always believe in ourselves and in our dreams!" Commented Grazia, professor of classical literature at Virgilio, a lover of reading and our precious editor, who has been editing her classic literature column entitled "Allois ophtalmois" on literary blog "Diary of lost thoughts".
His poetic debut was in February 2016, when three of his haiku were published in the book "Haiku between meridians and parallels season III" published by Fusibilialibri.
"Soffi di nuvole" his first collection of poems, published by talking boxes dates back to March 2017 and even today, after two years, he is talked about.
Dalila Bellacicco