Immagine & Poesia

By Lidia Chiarelli

Subjects: Translations into English, Italian poetry

Description: The poems in Lidia Chiarelli’s impressive debut collection, Immagine & Poesia convey a portrait-like quality, presenting portraits of a moment. These are Impressionist paintings of poems—acutely observed, vividly and delicately rendered celebrations of the moments of beauty that surround and permeate us. Physical sensations combine with emotion and reflection to imbue each work with multiple layers of meaning. The imagery is varyingly dramatic, precise, concrete, cosmopolitan or bucolic, expressing a sense of place and atmosphere. Each poem, each line is meticulously constructed and polished, and each is a work of art that imparts sensations to and summons responses from the reader. Beyond the descriptive, there is an evocation of wonder, loss, exhilaration, tenderness, fear—all those things that make the human experience familiar to all of us. In these graceful, sensitive poems, Lidia Chiarelli looks and listens. She tunes in to the music of the universe and invites us to hear. - Mary Gorgy, New York