Живе ствари
Laura Garavaglia (born 1956) is one of today’s prominent contemporary Italian poets. She is the author of dozens of poetry books, translated into many foreign languages around the world. She has participated in numerous poetry festivals throughout the world. This is the first time her poetry has been published in the Serbian language.
The main characteristic of her poems, in terms of form and content, is conciseness and metaphor, the basic meaning of which is not difficult to reach. Namely, Laura’s poems possess a rich associative spectrum and critical quality, which undoubtedly calls for the attention of readers and literary critics, because she speaks about her relationship to the inner (psychological, intimate) and outer (physical, social) world.
She only expresses herself at certain moments and occasions, which she considers interesting and intriguing enough to be written down and remembered. In this sequence of words belongs every poem, including the poem “Raffaele,” which represents a specific tribute and memory of her tragically deceased son.
The poet expresses a very skillful and unaccented philosophical view of the world, society, civilization, peace, and politics, but not in the crude sense of those words. She penetrates and metaphorically illuminates the physical perception of life and everything that constitutes our everyday environment. Hence the tendency for things to be succinct and finally summarized in thoughts and messages, which, despite their deliberate incompleteness, possess full depth, energy, and light. In terms of verse synthesis and poetic-stylistic structure, the poems are very unified and form a unique semantic and artistic whole.
Although she is silent about her own scale, she knows what she is and how relevant and significant the poetry she has is, and knows how to express it. She almost daily records the pulses of the emotional state, displaying enviable psychological observation, as well as philosophical intonation. The author’s work is effectively sublimated by rich personal and collective experiences, that is, knowledge of the world (“Mysticism”), representing an important constitutive element of this poetry, which in a special way deals with the transience and permanence of this earthly life.
The poems are short and effective, binding one to the other, thus, on the one hand, representing a modern-day poem and a thematic cantilena that is read in one breath and with the same interest. The spiritual and philosophical subtext of the book is already noticeable in the introductory verses, although it is not dominant at first. Certain elements of sacredness and cosmopolitism are present in the following poems, as a symbolic and verbal indication of the eternal, cosmic, and universal. Laura Garavaglia’s lyrical observations are very humane and unique, and they express dreams and the sublime. There is no room in her poems for repetition, improvisation, or superfluous details that would disrupt the basic meaning and message.
With a certain ease, the poet approaches her subject of inspiration, showing all her passion, creativity, and skill in a small space, expressing a lot. This simplicity, yet also spiritual straightforwardness, represents the crucial aesthetic value of the two-volume collection, which has its clear artistic and stylistic purpose and function. That is, the narrative and poetic form changes from poem to poem, and it speaks of a single-layered composition, as well as a unified hybrid form that is dominant and artistically refined.
Dr. Milutin Đuričković