Fresh from the press the book-CATALOLOGY “thresholds. Sampling sampling reviews” Released for the notebooks of the Bardo Edizioni/Lecce, pp. 271, Euro 15.60, by Franco Manzoni, Professor, poet and critical collaborator of Il Corriere della Sera, who moves his precious column of poetry since 2012 for 2012 to read “the historical back of the Milanese newspaper, delivering the collection of his writings to readers, mini-receipts on poetry books that arrived in the editorial office. Not a pulpit his, but a literary observatory capable of selecting and proposing readers for reading the Corriere the best of contemporary Italian poetry. And he did it not with the usual review as often I also do in Il Giornale (my praised by his friend Umberto Piersanti illustrious poet and professor at the University of Urbino), but with a few lines, that’s why Mini, who however grasp the soul and body, but also heart and mind.
Threshold is the title of the book, it is about to indicate an entry on tiptoe in the body of the book, on the threshold of the volume and the reviewed author, to grasp that perfume that only poetry manages to arouse. From the sheets, of the pages of Readingback on Sunday’s exit of Corriere della Sera, the threshold was born, the anthological collection of the “stamp format reviews” curated by Franco Manzoni from 2012 to 2024. A precious, targeted, sorting, observation, compass work, capable of grasping the skin and body, soul and feeling of each author, which becoming today a monumental work, traced, via, literary signs with over 250 pages, to explore poetry as a map of living, ethical and aesthetic compass, secular and spiritual vision.
With Franco Manzoni we enter the verses, among others, by Umberto Piersanti (one of the greats of Italian poetry) Antonio Bux, Giuseppe Langella, Luigi Fontanella Gilberto Finzi, Paolo Ruffilli, Vincenzo Guarracino, Ennio Cavalli, Tomaso Kemenny, Giuseppe Conte, up to international authors such as Ryszard Krynicki, Don Burss, at Gorbunova, Gerald Manley, Hopkins, Boris Pasternak and Anna Achmatova. But the names of the poets reviewed are many more, the mini-redemption for each of these, presents in the volume an orientation choice as a crowning of a lively attention by the author towards the lyric of the most qualified, large and minors who are. But beyond the label and the title that specifies its content, it remains a firm and passionate flowering of poetry for all seasons, far from rankings and patterns. Franco Manzoni of every plaquette and every author captures the most lively expressive and interesting results, particular poetic-thematic situations
expressed and condensed into sequences of images and events.
Thus the nature of this book is defined in the intersection of two coordinates where the anthological genre mixes with the essay and critical genre; The same motivation that organizes the structure of a similar work is in relation to this double orientation. And if on the one hand the anthological selection, oriented towards a precise documentary and reclassification function, is based on exact and specific reasons, the wise intent, analysis and commentary moves according to its parameters. Franco Manzoni poet himself who reports poetry books (about three hundred), of Italian and non -Italian poets, released for the types of 100 publishing houses including Nomos, Lieocolle, Marco Saya Edizioni, Mimesis, Crocetti, Antorem, Castelvecchi, Life happy, etc. The volume makes use of the preface by Roberto Pazzi, who defines Manzoni “between humility and aristocratic disdain”, and a afterword by Antonio Carlo Ponti, who identifies the genesis of a genre in his own way, exemplary, unique, to seal the work with critical authority.
The most persuasive confirmation of this book is in the fact that the author knows how to grasp the most authentic and personal times of each poet, objects and figures of memory, the poetic experience, the syntactic-expressive yield, the absolute autonomy of their being. The result was a short history of contemporary Italian poetry, enlarged to some foreign name. A clear, linear, not aligned, non -academic, but lively casket of writing scene where poetry is still queen of the world.
The author – Franco Manzoni was born in Milan on May 3, 1957. After graduating in classical letters with a thesis in Greek history, he founded in 1984 and was director of the Poetry and Culture Scheme magazine. Journalist, he has been a signature for forty years of the Corriere della Sera in Chronicle and Culture. On Sunday, reading since 2012 has been holding the mini column of critical reports thresholds, which flowed into this volume. Translator from Greek and Latin, epigraphist, literary critic, playwright, professor of grammar and Milanese dialectal literature, he was the author of Rai programs, consultant of the Milan Triennale and the humanitarian society. He has published numerous poetic Silogists of national and international importance. By his choice he never participated in any literary prize.
Carlo Franza