“Poetry of air”, the new book by Gabriella Sica
“Poems of air”, the new book by Gabriella Sica, is in great harmony with our time in need of air, which wants to breathe again. And it indirectly proposes the urgency of a change of air in the suffocating climate of our age overwhelmed by pandemics and wars and environmental problems of all kinds. It takes the ecological transition but in the meantime the poetry tries. It opens with precious phrases in exergue from poets who are for the author important references for his writing, sometimes also mentioned in the book: Wallace Stevens, Emily DickinsonFrancesco PetrarchElsa MorantGuido Cavalcanti and Nelly Sachs. Distributed in all Italian bookstores and digital sites, Poesie aria offers its readers a fascinating variety of themes, like a breath of fresh air.
Who is Gabriella Sica, protagonist of Italian poetry for over forty years
Gabriella Sica, originally from Tuscia but always Roman, has been the protagonist of Italian poetry for over forty years, participating since the early 1980s in a radical literary renewal with the magazine “Prato pagano” in which some of the most important poets made their debut contemporaries. She appreciated by Elsa MoranteAttilio Bertolucci e Giorgio Caproniwith many praiseworthy reviews to the assets up to the last one, which caused a certain sensation, by Alfonso Berardinelli which appeared on March 11 on “il FRIDAY” of Repubblica,
Gabriella Sica is the winner, or finalist in the triad, of numerous prizes, starting with the Brutium-Tropea for the famous life, the San Pellegrino for Vicolo del Bologna, the Metauro, the Frascati and the Camaiore for family poems, the Garessio-Ricci, Alghero Poesia, Arenzano and Dessì for The Tears of Things, the Luciana Notari Special and the San Vito al Tagliamento Jury Prize for her latest book, Tu io e Montale a cena, published by Interno Poesia at the end of 2019. She also obtained the Lerici Pea Prize for Poetic Opera 2014. But the figure of Gabriella Sica is rich and multifaceted, open to the change of literary genres and themes: poet but also writer and essayist. He has always published very original prose books, from Il bimbo published by Mondadori on the experience of the first year of a child’s life to Writing in verse. Metrica e poesia, which has had three editions, from Emily and the Others. With 56 poems by Emily Dickinson, released in 2010 and much loved by readers, which gave a new impetus to the translations in Italy of the American poet, aCara Europa che guardi (1915-2015) which is a very current portrait of Europe in the course of a century tormented by wars and lived by grandparents and parents up to the significant Ukraine chapter. Shoot on the border of Europe.
Gabriella Sica, interested in the image, from photography to video, has conceived, written and created for Rai docufilm of enormous diffusion and of great interest for poetry lovers but also for young people who have to face high school and university exams. There are six docufilms dedicated to the greatest poets of the twentieth century: Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, Umberto Saba, Sandro Penna, Giorgio Caproni and Pier Paolo Pasolini, all posted, on the occasion of Covid, on RaiPlay.
From the synopsis of “Poems of air”, published by “Interno Libri” for the “Interno Versi” series, structured in 204 pages and on the cover the reproduction of the Cascate di Fosso Castello di Chia (tempera by Monica Ferrando), we read: “Book of verses to be scattered, as it was done a time with the harvested grain. Book of figures, themes and auspices, as in a verse diary. Book of trees and animals, of clouds and earthquakes. Book of our time of few charms and many shipwrecks, overflowing with waste. Book that extends to Rome, a beloved city of all time, but also to other places, in particular Milan. Journey book of a “pilgrim” who makes imaginary encounters with distant poets and equally imaginary journeys. A book that, while walking, encounters events and people, friends and family, ancient gods and poets. And find flashes of history and autobiographical remnants. Book calibrated on months and seasons, on time and on losses, in which the theme of the hair sacrificed and changed into a star as a partial figure of a whole recurs as a guiding thread. Book full of air necessary to breathe because without air there is no word as without air there is no salvation of the body “.
We conclude with the first poem of the book, in a Milanese setting, A few meters and a few hours:
Look, look good, the view is clear
the reddish leaves on the opposite wall
a few meters from this house
Botanical Garden and Picture Gallery
but space is the same and time is the same.
A few meters away here is a mother basin
fertile shell under the egg
the child seems to be sleeping
with a coral twig around his neck
slipping down into the disorder of the world.
A few meters away here is a young man
to the amazement of the patrons
humble and true creatures of the people
on the table a pitcher two plates bread
light becomes verb and word.
This is not another family in the house
in the Christmas of bewilderment
of women of missing men and of boys
ready for Easter eggs
there are no frames or walls distances.
It is always us and our place
a few meters and a few hours
a point in the world to fall silent:
it is the leaven of a painting or a poem
the embryo of an unknown creation.