Fabio Strinati, “Pensieri nello scrigno”

The strokes of a metronome seem to accompany “Thoughts in the casket”, Fabio Strinati’s debut collection, published by Il Foglio, in the series of poetry edited by Cinzia Demi.

Halfway between classicism and avant-garde, they are not easy to read verses, they could almost make you think of words placed side by side, if there were not that kind of rhythm — precisely musical, but of a music not too catchy — to go through them and unify them, if not, on the contrary, an effort of total stripping is sensed. We understand that the author has read a lot of poetry, he tried to understand it without always succeeding, he produced something that asks of us the same effort and also the same trust. The poet is now “undressed of poetry”, and even with a certain nostalgia, his is a “wild jargon”, “without rhymes very obvious hindrance”. His is all about filing, removing, decanting, channeling, as if fearing that emotions could overflow, break into romanticism. Better to keep them at bay with a surgical lexicon, and, at the same time, oneiric and sidereal, a lexicon that is characterized by its content but, above all, by the sound.

The themes seem to be those dear to every poet and to every sensitive soul: night, loneliness, love, death, pain, bitterness, indeed, “amaritudine”, which in young people is, at times, much more bitter than in the elderly, whose pain is steeped in resignation.

Two dogs a blink of wings

a bitterness rips the chest

that hot pain

Punctuation is little used, at times one feels that the stylistic research is still in progress, as it is right and desirable, and the technicality is, yes virtuous, but also difficult, hermetic, cacophonous: “subsannamente egloga”, “ tralatizia transmigrate“.

But there are also glimpses that are already perfectly ripe and happy, such as “Skimmed is the north-east wind”, “the past of the gentleman gravedigger”, “the stabbing of a ray”.

Are we sure that all this rhetorical investigation ultimately satisfies the author? Are we sure that he does not feel regret for more “open and clear” rhymes? Isn’t it an involuntary confession that “I wish I could call the flute by name?”

I wish I could call the flute by name,

blessed contagious mouths

the hypocritical dagger the derelict stump

of withered flowers one and more crowns

And along these lines we conclude, reporting one of the less cryptic poems, and therefore more pleasing to our palate.

I MET THE POET

I met the poet undressed of poetry

of the candlestick a silent abatjour

a vitreous lexicon of the robin

although the only penalty

the dormant whistle

of the eternal medlar

on the threshold the fig tree