Poems of a flickering hope
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Fabio Pusterla’s new collection of poems starts from a neologism, Tremalume, which magically appeared on the page: a word in which, according to the author’s own admission, «the trembling, the threat and the concern by no means eliminate the small survival of a light, of a minimal light to rely on». A trace of hope, then.
Decided experimentalism
Divided into five sections (Le barre, Requiem, Cielo dei vinti, Lugangeles, Angelicanze), preceded by a proemial text (Word spaceship word freedom), Tremalume is a varied and multi-stylistic collection, in which the effusion of the subject (Dirty cage) a decisive experimentalism follows (Requiem for a Lombard riposto house), which places Pusterla’s lyric in a melting pot of extra-localization of the word and existential widening.
Decolonizing formula
Ample space is given to the decolonizing formula – an analysis of postcolonial criticism would be extremely appropriate – thanks to the figure of Truganini, who was the last aboriginal of Tasmania after the genocide of the Palawa people. The poet celebrates this woman with two very interesting sequences, perhaps the highest in the entire book, Frammenti di Truganini and Canzoni di Truganini: «Truganini looks at you / with the color of stone / her livid. With its mushroom / fetid smell. With its paddy / arid pain». Furthermore, the very name of Truganini acts in a Montalian manner with her rough musicality. And, in fact, in the verses of Pusterla the nomination certainly has a prominent place in the dictation. Think of Dante’s (pseudo-)lemma “angelicanza”: «Angelicanza, a perfume that has been following me / for a long time for no apparent reason. / Two occurrences in the Fiore dei contrasti / then nothing more in the major work, / instead full of angels. […] / Not the angel, not his triumphal / dazzling metaphysical figure, / not the image; rather an eventual essence / a grace that appears together with other minor ones». An equally decisive role belongs to light, the symbol of a longed-for political-social freedom: «Inside the ravines eyes / they await the return of the light. / Patients await you / fugitive light that you will return // migrant light».
Light, in its many qualities, is also present in a text dedicated to Pusterla’s poetic father, Philippe Jaccottet, a recently deceased French-Swiss poet, to whom the Ticino-born author devoted most of his translation work. Marcos y Marcos reprints for the occasion the Thoughts under the clouds (which include In the winter light), translated and edited by Pusterla himself. Who writes in the introduction: «Shadow and light, the perpetual confrontation between two antithetical elements that derive their raison d’être from each other, feeding each other: such could be the changing and complex background of Philippe’s poetry Jaccottet, who grew up over the years around a severe research, which one would like to define as ethical, if the term weren’t too cumbersome and badly suited to the reserve with which the author has always surrounded his work». Jaccottet is a poet poor in himself, exotopic (Bakhtin would say), always oriented towards seeking in the splendor of otherness and in the modesty of the ego the exact modulation to get in touch with the mystery of being.
Fabio Pusterla, Tremalume, Marcos y Marcos, pag. 192, €20.00
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