Poems 4.0: in bookstores, the new book by the poet from Campania Ida Testa, defined as the “Neapolitan Trilussa”
[Press release]
Ida Testa’s new book of poems entitled “Poesie 4.0” is available, following “Poesie 3.0” and “Poesie 2.0”. Published by Aletti in the prestigious series “I Diamanti”, created with the support of Alessandro Quasimodo (son of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Salvatore Quasimodo and the poet Maria Cumani), the book is available at any bookstore, upon order, and boasts a preface by the writer, director and screenwriter Cosimo Damiano Damato.
The intellectual from Puglia Damato, a poet himself, has a deep knowledge of the poetic word and has also collaborated with the greatest interpreters of the Italian and international scene, such as the late pianist Luis Bacalov, and then Antonella Ruggiero, Morgan, Sergio Cammariere and many others, in theatrical performances mixing music and poetry.
Damato delved into the soul of the work of which he fully grasped the essence. He writes in the preface: «Light-hearted poems, light songs, civil and political thrusts, all notes sewn into rhymes. Verses permeated by the blood of the South. Naples in her veins, storytelling, a wide angle of everyday life. Ida Testa enjoys writing, perhaps to hide some eyes salty with tears and to make her muscles work again.
The art of lightness, laughter that becomes thought and investigation». Already in these few words, extracted from the substantial introduction that she wrote for the volume, Damato fully captures the astute poetics of the author, originally from Caserta, born in 1953, graduated in Pedagogy with a thesis in History of Philosophy "Influence of Eastern Philosophy on Arthur Schopenhauer", published in Rassegne Filosofiche in 1977, with professor Raffaello Franchini, a student of Benedetto Croce, as supervisor.
Hers is the substantial curriculum of a skilled connoisseur of the human soul and of living, who, faced with the injustices of the world, makes irony the place of her own resilience. Damato writes again: «Metaphors, sneers, twists and turns, words written in pen on squared pages. Generational testament-verses. There is also a subtle civil and political scratch in Ida Testa, it is here that the poetic talent reveals itself thanks to her kicking and raspberries, as a wise and inspired Eduardo De Filippo taught us, all that army of mediocre populists who have nothing alive except superficiality».
Damato identifies parallels between the poet and other great Neapolitan intellectuals: «The epilogue of Poesie 4.0 is a lesson in style that Prof. Bellavista di De Crescenzo would have liked. “Celeste” is Pulcinella’s slap to a former president of the Lombardy Region. Probably a poem born in front of the television, watching Maurizio Crozza who made a bitter parody of this politician in unsuspecting times.
This is the courage of poets, acrobats, the true mission of art revolutionaries. […] My friend Erri De Luca taught me that when Neapolitans get pissed off, they speak in Neapolitan. Here is Ida Testa, Pasolinian and corsair, who entrusts us with a pissed off and badass ending, a precious legacy for her grandchildren».
The recurring and fundamental topics covered in the book Poesie 4.0, as in all the previous “Poesie 2.0”, “Poesie 3.0”, the author herself comments, «are testimonies of daily life, of the community to which I belong, of my friendships, of events that really happened, happy or painful, even personal, like a storyteller».
All reasons that have earned her, from friends and readers, the nickname of "Trilussa Partenopea", of which, she says satisfied: «I am very flattered».ci
Article published on March 2, 2021 - 16pm
