Ten memorable works to understand poetry

Between the structure of modern lyricism and poetry from the antiquity, the energy of silence and word keep flowing, despite claims that after Auschwitz, lyricism was impossible. How can one choose ten poems among the almost infinite sequence of poems that create something from the fugitive, from the sacred or from the nothing? From Pindarus to Rilke, from Garcilaso to Baudelaire, any choice is a risk. Here are the ten poems of my big gamble.

10

Diario bizantino

CRISTINA CAMPO

(1977)

“Due mondi –e io vengo dall’altro” (Two worlds –and I’m from the other): this is the line that opens up the poem, and is repeated two more times, and that I always hear resounding inside with a sudden feeling of strangeness. The author, who would have preferred to have written less than what she wrote, wrote essays that probably constitute the best Italian prose of the 20th century, as well as some poems like this one, where she experiences contact with the sacred. The gateway does not separate body and soul, but rather soul and spirit, and all this happens before the thousand eyes of the cherub angel.