Not long ago, in an article devoted to the presentation of World Poetry Day, I wrote: "Poetry must be removed from the ivory tower in which it was confined and down among the people ". I am firmly convinced that it loses some of its very essence, if you reduce it to a first fruits intended for an audience of a few initiates. This is not to say that this absolutely has to be compliant at all costs with their recipients. Indeed. If poetry has come down from the ivory tower, he must do so no easy compromises and concessions surface, and the public must still meet her in an open and available. But I am convinced that one reason she moved away a large number of readers from the poetic word should be sought in the self-complacent in free and darkness that has too often polluted the roots of contemporary poetry. Of course I'm not supporting the party of a clear and limpid poetry at all costs. Similar schematics are far from the complexity of doing poetico. La poesia ha il pieno diritto di essere oscura e sfuggente, purchè questo sia intimamente legato alla pregnanza del suo messaggio. Se manca questo accordo profondo si cade, a mio avviso, in un pirotecnico gioco illusionistico che ha poco a che fare con l'autentica poesia. Questa riflessione, che meriterebbe un maggiore approfondimento, è ritornata prepotentemente nella mia mente dopo l'incontro con il poeta Umberto Fiori. Innanzitutto qualche riferimento biografico. Umberto Fiori è nato a Sarzana nel 1949 e vive a Milano. Ha fatto parte, come cantante e autore di canzoni, degli Stormy six, gruppo storico del rock italiano. Ha pubblicato le seguenti raccolte poetiche: Case, (S. Marco dei Giustiniani, 1986), confluito poi nel suo secondo Sample book (Marcos y Marcos, 1992), Clarification (Marcos y Marcos, 1995), the plaquette talking to the wall, all (Marcos y Marcos, 1998), La Bella Vista (Marcos y Marcos, 2002). What strikes you immediately is poetic in its search for the will to achieve full transparency and to communicate a direct, almost physical, with the player. His verses - and this is in my opinion one of the strengths of the poetry of flowers - are able to maintain an always said very softly, conversational, almost at ground level and take the same time, without leveling simplifications, all lumps left over from the real. I asked a few questions that Umberto Fiori was the protagonist of the penultimate round of review Poetry / Poetry, Meetings with contemporary poetry. The meeting was divided into two phases: the first flowers have spoken to the public Fogazzaro Palace in Schio, and then held together with Thomas Leddi who accompanied him on guitar, a concert based on poems by the Centre Franco Loi Stable Culture, proving to be not only a poet worthy of particular attention: a singer with a deep voice and pentrante and a stylish and charismatic stage presence.
- She was a member in the seventies as a singer and songwriter, Stormy Six, a group of Italian rock history. Then he changed course and is dedicated to poetry. What breaks and which sees the continuity between these two moments of its activities Art?
In fact, I started to write poems well before you make the musician. Entering in Stormy Six began to write songs and sing them. This has changed a lot my way of thinking about writing: I had to do with the page, I did not produce a text "dumb" a verbal object disembodied, the words were designed from the outset to be brought before a public by the voice of someone (me). The difference is not purely formal, aesthetic when you get on stage and singing, there is the mediation of the book, your words and your physical presence are all one, "you put your face, you expose yourself, you put in the game, you take public responsibility di quello che hai scritto. E' un "martirio" nel senso tecnico, etimologico del termine: la parola è "convalidata" da un testimone in carne e ossa. Io questo lo sentivo molto; sentivo il rischio che il senso delle parole correva offrendosi alla gente che ascoltava. Tra l'altro, il nostro pubblico era molto eterogeneo, con aspettative, competenze e livelli di attenzione molto diversi: un giorno suonavamo in un'università tedesca, il giorno dopo sulla piazza di un paesino della Calabria, e così via. E' un'esperienza che mi ha segnato: quando - negli anni '80- ho chiuso con il mestiere di musicista e mi sono dedicato completamente alla poesia, la mia idea di parola era ancora legata a quel rapporto immediato, quasi fisico, con il destinatario. In addition, all the ideological certainties had collapsed in the past could still support my writing: my poems, now, were completely unarmed. This, of course, gave me anxiety, but also a new sense of freedom, truth and seriousness.
- His poetry refuses almost programmatic darkness and seeks to create transparency of communication, a dryness almost prose and a direct meeting with the player. Why did you choose a wording so bare and faithful to reality? Where does this intermediacy of tone and intention of this report and clarity?
at about thirty years, when I had already written a lot (without deciding to publish) a certain way of making poetry - one that points sull'allusione, sull'obliquità, ellipsis, on the primacy of the signifier - began to feel sick a bit '. We felt in a too much of literature, aesthetics, and also - how to say - a trick. I was tired of the poem written for the initiated, for the critics, if not for the poets themselves. If poetry is this exercise in style of literary subtlety, I thought, then I do not care, or there are some things to say, a way to put into play, or might as well give up. So I put on the trail of what I called my "normal speech". I thought of a poem as much as possible clear that coffin, which strives to be faithful to the world of things. My lettore ideale non era (non è) uno che di poesia se ne intende: era (è) una persona capace di ascoltare quello che un altro ha da dirle, di confrontare con la sua la propria esperienza, senza troppi filtri estetico-letterari.
- Nella sua poesia è quasi assente una figura retorica come la metafora del tutto centrale nella poesia del Novecento mentre trova larghissimo spazio una figura un po' in disuso come la similitudine. Come mai questa scelta?
La metafora intreccia e complica i rapporti tra le parole e le cose; nella similitudine, due immagini vengono accostate, una "spiega" l'altra, la illustra, ma ciascuna conserva la propria integrità, è interamente riconoscibile. Anche qui, My appetite is driven by its quest for greater legibility, clarity and fidelity to the world, its most common sense, no longer shared.
- So far, she has written four books of poetry: Examples (1992), Clarification (1995), All (1998) and the beautiful view (2002). How do you see the stylistic and thematic evolution through these four collections?
In Examples I had almost completely eliminated by a kind of inhibition, the first, the lyrical subject. I could not say "we", nor "I". The subject was mostly "a" or "yes" impersonal. From one book to another I gradually recovered the first single, to return Centrally located in Bella Vista. In terms of language, it seems to me that there were carried out after major examples. In Beautiful view is the novelty of a "natural" landscape and well identified, compared to an unspecified urban settings of earlier books. But in the end, that is closely related to marine landscape walls, excavations and the homes of earlier books. Beyond the differences, I have the impression that she wrote four chapters of a book.
- Milan, Milan, as in many other contemporary poets, has an absolute centrality in his poetry. What attracts her to this city?
to Milan (in the verses that never names, not even indirectly), I had a first repulsion (on my arrival, when I was five years) then - more than an attraction - an acceptance. Let's say I had to deal with this city, a bit 'as we all must come to terms with where we live, or if you want to live with the fact that a place and there are data.
- Voltess the concert led by Thomas Leddi Stabile Center for Culture is based on poems by Franco Loi. How did this project through which he returned to play with Thomas Leddi member of Stormy Six? What role did Loi poetic in its formation? What other poets have been important to his artistic maturity? Vòltess was born without a specific project, nel 1998: Tommaso Leddi aveva musicato un testo di Franco Loi, e mi aveva chiesto di cantarlo giusto per sentire come funzionava. Da lì è partito tutto: io ho scelto altri testi dai libri di Loi e Tommaso ha scritto le canzoni in pochi mesi, una dopo l'altra. Non sempre le cose vengono fuori così, quasi senza sforzo: spesso i progetti più belli sulla carta si insabbiano in mille discussioni, dubbi, ripensamenti. In questo caso, penso che abbia giocato molto, oltre al nostro lungo affiatamento musicale e alla nostra amicizia, l'amore di tutti e due per il poeta in questione. Tommaso conosce Loi fin da quando era bambino (è un caro amico di suo padre), io l'ho incontrato negli anni '70, ed è stato un incontro memorabile. Franco Loi has an idea "strength" of the poem, which goes beyond the dimension of literary aesthetics. There is a tension in his work political, philosophical, even religious (makes you think of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky), which in other authors of our century is absent, removed, or otherwise kept "under control". This diversity I was first shocked, then conquered. Other poets were important for me Vittorio Sereni and Franco Fortini, I had the good fortune to know personally, and then - to name just a limit to the twentieth century and Italians - Camillo Sbarbaro, Eugenio Montale, Sandro Penna, Giorgio Caproni, Andrea Zanotto.
- How is it in his poetry there is such a regular presence the taking of speech, of discourse and chat?
I feel much the power of the word, but its violence. They are very vulnerable to any type of speech: speak to me always seems a decisive act, with potential "magic". Whenever two people turn the word, is to decide which way the whole world. The talk tries to escape this seriously, but she also hatching a tremendous power. I think my poetry as a discourse that assumes the full brunt of this power.
I feel much the power of the word, but its violence. They are very vulnerable to any type of speech: speak to me always seems a decisive act, with potential "magic". Whenever two people turn the word, is to decide which way the whole world. The talk tries to escape this seriously, but she also hatching a tremendous power. I think my poetry as a discourse that assumes the full brunt of this power.
