Sensi diversi

Luca’s poets (and therefore those of his poetry) are many, and I find them all here, and rediscover them at the same time: Saba, Penna, Bellezza, Pasolini, Sereni (and the later Montale). I rediscover them in their expert linguistic commitment, in their anti-lyrical tension, in their civic drive. Consider the highly personal reinterpretation of the rasoterra,  the ‘downwards slide’ that the lexicon and register accomplish to effectively, clashing vulgar words like ‘cazzo’, ‘mazza’, ‘culo’ with hyper literary ones like ‘strepito’, ‘storna’, ‘occhieggiano’, ‘repentino’, ‘veleggia’ without the slightest narcissistic or experimental intent. And consider the use, even more expert, of Leopardi’s and Pasolini’s ‘false neglect’ in the long poem Diritti, that  poorly restrained anxiety for narration and argument that arches the verse into hypermetres and enjambments, and breaks it, making it move with thought, with speech, shaping it, letting it flounder in ‘ugliness’ and inelegance, and making it soar in sudden lyrical moments

From the Introduction by Emmanuela Tandello