Collection of poems
Schena publisher - year 1983

PREFACE TO MYSELF

I have written many books of poetry for presentations. Poets young and old, city ​​and country, already known or anxious to be, love the metric and rhyme or desecrating proud of it. I participated in debates and panel discussions on poetry. I reviewed books of friends and friends of friends, and every time, with greater or more painful honesty, I tried to find the thread, the bond, the logical link, the inspiration, if you want, of making poetry. Often I felt discomfort and embarrassment. But everything with great willingness to understand.

Now it's up to me to talk about myself. And betray confusion of thoughts, crushed concepts, especially the feeling of a deep shame, my modesty, violated. So maybe I just have the last act of justification, legitimacy can this book and that is self-criticism, things for those that are, but in what scavarsi in background, the merciless rummage among the innermost thoughts and secrets so great is the possibility of an acquittal if it was the total and complete confession.

A premise: I might have to resort to many literary friends, some clear blade, how do you say, and I believe that no one would be pulled back. The book he would have certainly benefited and my vanity would grow. But it would have been a completely honest in the sense that surely of me and of my poems have spoken well, perhaps even beyond every benevolent forecast, but I would be (apart from the relationship of gratitude and gratitude) to wonder how much truth there was in the judgments made and how much was due to such common acquaintances, complicity in generational, prospects of distant but precise reciprocal trade affected courtesies.
I never knew the whole truth.
And this would in my heart, more than compared to the other, overshadowed the pleasure, the value of the presentation.
Then, I might as well be writing about me.
But – tell someone – why did you decided to publish your poems if such and so many are the doubts, questions, doubts?
The objection is founded, Your Honor, and also merits an explanation.
For a long time until now, I stubbornly refused to publish a book of poems. On my table, in the newsroom, I come to tens: printed to perfection or hastily put together by unsuspecting typographers, illustrated by drawings of artists or sober Franciscan. Many books useless. Very few, if not rare, those worthy of circular. And every time I was thinking about the fate, on the journey of my hypothetical book, in the great sea of ​​stormy poetry also ugly and useless. And I said no to myself and to the insistence of my tribe peremptory affectionate and family.
Then between this tenacious purpose, ie the stubbornness not to publish a book not to be confused for the worst with all the others and continue the painstaking, insisted, even secretly writing poetry, was created as a laceration approfonditasi with time. Because then I sprang into gasps of revenge, unconfessed desires verification, judgment. So I attended crowded contests for unpublished poems. I measured for almost a devilish sense of challenge with phalanges, legions, regiments of poets from all over Italy: housewives and writers, barbers and principals retired, sessantottino in disarmament and Katanguese clothes from Armani, maidens troubled by pangs of love and bureaucrats frustrated. And every time I waited with logic coldness, with the clarity of reason rather than with anxious expectation, to see how it would end.
And often ended up in that wonderful game in the massacre that becomes such if seen and experienced with detachment. The vast plethora of competitors, generally not less than a half thousand, with falcidia merciless say was reduced to twenty appearances. And very often I was there. The decimation of the First World War continued – twenty one passed ten – but do not touch me. Then he came to five. And more than once I was still there. Finally, the trio of winners. I met so poets elderly and young poets, double-breasted gray and matching tie and faded jeans and angry by the foliage.
After the rite of awards, after the speeches, cups and medals, we find ourselves with a wink and coterie and we wondered books.
– "This year I'm in Viareggio, I do not miss ".
– "I prefer the Taormina, is more serious'.
– "Tell me about it, better Carducci ».
When it was my turn I did not know what to say. I felt the discomfort of my interlocutors, their displeasure even, but I could not do anything.
But as, I had not even published a little book any? But it was possible?
I was trying to make me humble, but my fault poet without book sortie the opposite effect. I could look like that is unbearable for my diversity that was then considered a kind of intellectual snobbery, the inconceivable refusal to use the normal channels of expression.
And the contradictory tear in me grew. I was a poet halved.
Restless as a sinner of Dostoewsky (I could not continue to make innumerable venial sins believing assolvibile anyway just because I committed what I considered the most ú great mortal sins and that the publication of a book) I am now with my printed collection.
Thoughts on Paper, repeated tens, hundreds of times in the pages equal, I seem less my. Remains alive that is the feeling of modesty violated. As if I was placed naked in a crowd if not hostile certainly indifferent and distracted.
But this is ultimately the fate of each book.

Because the reasons of history?
Why you can find the reasons for my story, my roots and the history of my country, my people.
A story that can not be the middle man and his destiny for eternity for a way also of eternity. And on the way there is the hope of the Christian message
. My roots are rural. My childhood and my teenage years are nourished by exhausting sunny afternoons, long controre and rhythms of work in the countryside.
A childhood of sunrises and sunsets. Of festivals and large eat. All this and more makes balance my world and binds him to the earth, to the moods of the earth.
– Good year this year.
– We hope for the coming year.
But all this, if it binds me to the history of the past, also raises the need to pass on something to my children, nexus of immortality as Pascal said.
To them the sense of what was my, the sprouting inside me, how I was and also the maturation occurred, because they themselves have clear reasons being.
The reasons of history are so my and their reasons.
My grandfather, during the war against the brigands of the Piedmontese Bourbon, was chosen at random because it was going to surprise, at night, a bandit chief who had hidden, only, in the countryside of Canosa. It was d'winter and strong nevicava. My ancestor, who belonged to the National Guard, galloped for hours. Even him alone with his thoughts and his fear. From a hut of leaves glimpsed a dim light. The robber was sleeping with his head hanging on the table. Grandfather Paul, so called my ancestor, fired a day-two and fled.
The story that my mother often told me he had a fine. So I never knew if that brigand chief died or if the attempt failed.
For a long time, been on the side of the robber unaware of his fate. Then I also understood the reasons for the gallop winter and perhaps the only shot fired by precipitation from grandfather Paul. For both reasons of history. Individual reasons, crushed by the negligible episode, of no weight, but also included in the big man's journey. Also for this reason, and in a book.
A last remnant of modesty has forbidden me to write a dedication. The I draw now: I offer this book, pledge of love, my wife and my children which are supremely proud.
The rite is consumed. To the end but with thoughts of love.

MICHELE SAMPLE