Primavera (poetry)

Menotti Lerro gets the first prize "Renata Canepa" at the Turin International Book Fair, 2010.

Primavera^[1] (Spring) is a poetry collection by Italian poet Menotti Lerro, published in 2008.

Flyer of the "Poetry Reading" and of the "Presentation" of the Lerro's work by Andrew Mangham at The University of Reading,UK, in 2011.

In this book the author collected all his poems published till that moment (around 300 poems) which represent the first season (youth) of the life of a man and poet. The book has been since the beginning very apreciate^[2] by critics,^[3] receiving national prizes.^[4] As Andrew Mangham pointed out in the volume The Poetry of Menotti Lerro^[5] this is "an important collection of around three hundred poems entitled Spring. The volume aims to identify the first “season” of Lerro’s life, both as a writer and as a man. The book features a preface by Roberto Carifi and a revealing introduction from Lerro himself.^[6]

According to Giancarlo Pontiggia, Primavera is "a very extensive volume. It aims to be a sort of anthological compendium of all his previous literary works. The title alludes to the first season of life, seen with the eyes of one who has experienced it, and feels the need to summarize it, giving it some order that will be, first of all – as it is inevitable –, the order of time and of seasons. And, in fact, the book is divided into four sections, which stretch out from Childhood, through Adolescence and Youth, to the conquered Maturity, foreseeing, within each section, a sort of progression of thought and of emotion, marked also numerically [...] and chronologically [...]. Titles, expressing an anxious and anguished sensibility, accompany each section, partly recovered from previous collections [...]. A path of life and of knowledge that is astonishing in so young a poet, both for the richness of existential themes (which extend also to the great religious questions), and for the tragic tension of the speech, over which the traumatic perception (almost primordial, at the bottom) of a world that has lost, indistinctly, even the idea of sky (recurrent subject of the third section) hangs, like the weight of a great disaster".^[7]

In the introduction to Primavera Lerro stresses the relation between "youth and feelings" in his poetry: "Feelings, in fact, in poetry (as in life) sometimes can be “dangerous”, because, in their will of expression and fulfillment, they go as far as ruining the verse, giving it a pathetic and clumsy air. Unfortunately even I – as maybe happens to every aspiring writer – have been a victim of an almost unrestrained sentimentalism […]. The desire of telling my feelings and my personal story, in fact, has marked my output (even if I have always tried to give to my private emotions some features that could render them universal because I was certain that this was the only way to give artistic dignity to my feelings). […] I realize, moreover, that in some poems of mine I discover Shakespeare, Dante, maybe Petrarca, Leopardi… the poets of my spring are many. Their poetry has nourished my poetry and I am not ashamed of it […]. Art, therefore, runs parallel to the growth of the body, nourishing itself and developing itself in these fundamental years. […] I would say, leaving the season of feelings [Spring], the eyes start to see and it is possible to notice that the world is darker than we believed; we realize that, moreover, rules and norms, imprisoning and classifying words which are more or less adapted in poetry or in life, do not exist. Yet every word can give an artistic effect if it relates well to others. Today I understand that summer is arrived and the soul is not anymore the absolute truth. The soul, if it exists, is just a part of the body."^[8]

Awards

• Video: at the Turin International Book Fair, 2010, receiving the "Renata Canepa" prize^[9]
• (2009) Primavera is one of the four finalists for the Leonforte prices^[10]

Poems as lyrics

In 2015 some poems of Lerro (some from Primavera), become lyrical songs,^[11] with the title of I Battiti della Notte. The first concert^[12] is set in Poland.^[13]

Menotti Lerro to Gdańsk with the poster of the concert I Battiti della Notte

.

Concerts:

• 31-01-2015, Gdańsk, Poland.^[14]

Poems from Primavera translated into other languages

• 2011 The poetry of Menotti Lerro; (Tr. into English), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011;^[15]
• 2011 Poesías Elegidas\Poesie Scelte, Zona.^[16] Tr. Ana María Pinedo López, Preface by Carla Perugini, Alessandro Serpieri and Gabriela Fantato. [Selected poems trans. into Spanish]
• 2011 Selected Poems, Genesi. Trans. Maria Rosaria La Marca and Andrew Mangham. Preface by Andrew Mangham. [Selected poems trans. into English]^[17]
• 2013 Poeme alese, Genesi. Trans. Simona Sămulescu and Andrew Mangham; Project director Lidia Vianu from the University of Bucharest, [Selected poems (Parallel text) trans. into Romanian and English].^[18]

References

External links

• A Biographical note in italian language
• A review of the book
• OPAC SBN (Italian Libraries)
• COPAC (English Libraries)