Valerio Magrelli

Big Frank has been reading "Nearsights" by Valerio Magrelli (translated from the Italian by Anthony Molino). You won't find much of his work available in English, but what there is well worth reading. Magrelli writes short poems. Many of his poems trace the birth of poems, and he appears to do much of his writing at night in his bed: "Under the sheets my roots of flesh/ lie entangled,/ only my head juts out". He uses sharp images, and reveals in his poetry the shifting climate of mind-body we all pass through in life. Here are a couple of his poems. Most of his poems are untitled.

I am what is missing

from the world I inhabit,

the One

I'll never meet.

Spinning, I coincide

with what I lack.

I am my own eclipse,

my absence, melancholy,

the geometrial object

I'll need forever to do without.

--- Valerio Magrelli

I've often imagined gazes

surviving the act of seeing

as if they were poles,

measured distanced, lances

in battle.

Then I think of a room

just abandoned

where similar traces remain

for a time suspended and intersecting

in the balance of their design

intact and overlapping, like

pick-up sticks.

---- Valerio Magrelli