I NEVER FORGET TO CALL YOU LOVE

I NEVER FORGET TO CALL YOU LOVE

Non mi dimentico mai di chiamarti amore (I never forget to call you love) is the sylloge published by Parallelo45 for which I surely “won’t forget” to thank Carmelo Cossa and Manuale di Mari

February has arrived, the month of Valentine’s Day, the most famous romantic occasion, just as romantic is the author’s soul.

Carmelo Cossa is immediately striking in the way he declares his love: love for poetry.

So Poetry becomes the way for expressing the idealisation of love as a totally harmonising expression of feeling.

The author is like a knight of the dolce stil novo, even though life has taken him far from his roots.

Reading the poems in Non dimentico mai di chiamarti amore (I never forget to call you love) I had a strong sense of how the journey from his homeland to the place that would offer him fulfilment was a key element for Carmelo.

Among my favourite poems:

Con il cuore appeso (With the Hanging Heart) because I found myself in the concept of a night grip and also in the comparison of a shredded cloth stretched out in the sun.

Natura e vita (Nature and Life) because I found the personification of nature in the first person a metaphor capable of giving a powerful sense of flow, vitality and harmony.

Magia di vita (Magic of life) for the concept of the ‘beginning again’ of the cycle of the seasons that repeat, but even more so, relive.

Speaking of his Poetry, Carmelo Cossa also quotes Rita Levi Montalcini:

it is better to add life to days than days to life

thus capturing the mark of what I would dare to call a life mission for him: he lives for poetry and makes poetry alive.

So I invite you to pause on Non mi dimentico mai di chiamarti amore (I never forget to call you love) and to think about to which ‘love’ your life is dedicated.

AND THEN WE WILL BE SAVED

AND THEN WE WILL BE SAVED

With E poi saremo salvi – And then we will be saved again I thank Monica and again I talk about the Strega Prize

And then we will be saved is the debut novel by Alessandra Carati, published by Mondadori, winner of the Opera prima Viareggio Rèpaci prize and among the top seven finalist books for the Strega 2022 prize.

Andrea Vitali, celebrated writer from Bellano, proposed and presented the book.

The salvation told by Alessandra Carati is sought because of the war in Bosnia through an escape to Italy, but the characteristic of this novel is precisely its ability to show how being safe does not mean being saved.

And one finds oneself reflecting on roots, or perhaps better said uprooting, and how there is no place in the world where one can escape from pain.

A pain that manifests itself in different ways is that it is the only true “arbiter.”

Alessandra tells us Aida’s story in episodes, sort of like when we remember “that time.”

And in between times, life flows.

And in between times the family changes, while remaining a fixed point, at times distant, like the land of her origin.

The reflection this reading leaves me with concerns the impossibility of leaving behind pain, whatever kind it may be.

We cannot prevent pain from being part of us; we can only choose how to live with it.

Salvation, then, in this book, reconnects with another Strega Prize winner, Tutto chiede salvezza – Everything asks for salvation, the book by Daniele Mencarelli.

There are indeed many kinds of salvation at different levels.

I find these words of Pablo Neruda emblematic:
If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.

However, I am also struck by these two basically similar interpretations:

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King

The only tool that can save my life is imagination.
Alejandro Jodorowsky

Did you feel saved when?

BETWEEN THE FINGERS OF DREAMS

BETWEEN THE FINGERS OF DREAMS

Between the Fingers of Dreams is the gift I received from Anna Calisti thanks to Manual of Mari

The cover of the book shows a red rose and Rosa Rossa is the pseudonym of the author who literally put her heart into this book.

And with my heart I thank her.

Anna’s poems paint Love in all its forms, in all its facets, even the painful ones, each just like a rose petal: delicate, fragrant, colorful and velvety.

Some petals are personal dedications, other petals are reflections, and there is also some poetry in French because life led Anna to move with her family to Luxembourg.

Anna was born the same year as my mom, but before I discovered this I was already caring for her.

In this comment she told me about how her mother used to make coffee on the wood stove,  you can imagine me, reading with heart eyes, can’t you?!

Anna’s poem I prefer is in fact Memories: it conveyed to me the full force of her roots which I cherish.

The world in a square, life flowing, a journey through time.

Between the fingers of dreams a title that allows to thnik to dreams in a tangible way, in some way allows to be able to touch them.

We are approaching the magical season of Christmas: is there a dream that you wish you could touch?

Speaking of dreams, understood not as wishes but precisely as sleep-related psychic phenomenon, for me they always represent an intense desire to be able to find any messages they contain.

What do you think about this?

Do you think there is a definite reason behind what our R.E.M. phase shows us?

Can you understand your dreams?

MARTA’S BROLO

MARTA’S BROLO

I sincerely thank Beatrice Tognarelli and Mari’s Manual for the opportunity to read Marta’s Brolo

I admit that when I first read the title of this book, I wondered what a brolo was.

Do you know?

Around here, we don’t call it brolo, we just say vegetable garden, or in slang “vineyard” even though there isn’t any vine plant.

So: at the first step of Marta,s Brolo I learned something new.

But the most beautiful surprise was this wonderful dedication.

And I listened to the author’s heart and I sensed a deep love for roots, with reference to both the land and family, and this as you know is something that I cherish.

Are you fortunate enough to have a vegetable garden?

My father has always tended vegetable gardens: at our house we only had a strip of land, but he also helped elsewhere, allowing us to eat fresh, wholesome vegetables.

This, on the other hand, is the mini garden that my father-in-law gave us for the kitchen, although in the house unfortunately the plants suffer.

Speaking of cooking, I enjoyed the recipes that Marta’s Brolo encompasses.

So did the particular “introductions” to each chapter.

I was also pleased to find several references to coffee, including this one

The smell of coffee intoxicated the room, she poured it into the cup, and stood at the window to taste it, closed her eyes as the rustle of vegetation came to her, suave sound of the countryside.

What sound comes from your window as you drink coffee?

DANDELION COFFEE

DANDELION COFFEE

My aunt of Belluno origins: from Mel to be precise, who always has excellent advice in store regarding the use of herbs or fruits, sent me this video

Hats off to The Guardian of the Wood Ferruccio Féro Valentino, and admiration for Tuenno, the Tovel Valley and the Non Valley.

Obviously my attention went to coffee made with dandelion roots.

Have you ever drank dandelion coffee?
Could you prepare it?

I know that the uses of dandelion are many, but I immediately associate it with the blow

Its little Ether Hood
Doth sit upon its Head
The millinery supple
Of the sagacious God
Till when it slip away
A nothing at a time
And Dandelion’s Drama
Expires in a stem.
Emily Dickinson

Emily reveals the drama yet I find myself rethinking the playful aspect that the Dandelion gave me in childhood, when the slip away was yet to come.

Have you ever run in a meadow like this?

The Dandelion’s pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas
The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower,
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o’er.
Emily Dickinson

The Proclamation of the Suns.

These “suns” give us color, hope, apparently coffee too, and then what?

Do you know other ways to use dandelion?
Or can you use other wild herbs in some kind of preparation?

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