Angela Caccia's "Il Tocco Abarico del Dubbio"

Not being afraid of emotions, feelings and beauty is a good thing, too often considered unfashionable.

“The abaric touch of doubt” is a collection by Angela Caccia that still manages to move us. The title refers to that point — the abaric point — in zero gravity, where the attraction of the earth and the moon cancel each other out. There lies the doubt, which allows us to investigate, which, in turn, leads towards the self, towards being in the world, a Dasein of Heideggerian memory.

These poems, divided into sections and preceded by short introductions in lyrical prose, touch on universal topics that unite us all.

Death, first of all. “The eyes of a tombstone always bring melancholy: they no longer look at anyone”, “the blood remains lukewarm from the many interrupted dreams.” On the one hand it limits us, on the other, as in Heidegger, it makes us freer, allowing us to rethink our life and choose a more authentic one.

Another theme is the filial relationship, understood as detachment from the deceased parent, a sweet memory exacerbated by absence, but also continuation of oneself in the children, a project. But children, we discover, are different from us, they are otherness and the future, even though they carry with them the genes and the memory of past generations. Another reason is the nostalgia for everything that was and does not return.

“In your eyes

the remains of an absence

that you ignore and

I do not forgive

- I have neither planted nor buried it

It is there in a legend

And becomes night beyond my crosses. “

Great space is given to poetry itself, to the act of poetry experienced as essential, as an outlet but also as research, the difficult genesis of each word: distilled, indispensable, capable of embodying a single thought and only that.

“- No need to work in subtraction -

the verses proceed clear

take each other by the hand

the exact words “

“You will have to dig

in consonants

between vowels

associate with sound

odors singing images “

But the word is still insufficient (“word that does not heal”).

The poems are born from reflections, observations, paintings, events: a life that breaks, a funeral, a child who did not know her grandfather, one day in the hospital, the landing of migrants in Lampedusa, a dying dog, a reunion with classmates. Small events that become poetic inspiration for a sensitive soul. Caccia is not content with living them, but wants to analyze the emotions they arouse, experience them, recreate them with a gnoseological purpose. The poems stem the emotion, channel it, phenomenologically they validate the existing because they are intuitive shortcuts.

“Only one

the right word that

adheres to the moment

and find the key

of a woolly tangle

in the chest “

Not a minor part has religious research, the need to overcome death in faith.

“Then there is an ancient story that speaks of life beyond, of resurrection, of eternity. It says that no one rests in death, but proceeds undeterred in his vital impulse, more alive than ever. Sometimes this is the most appropriate answer. “

We conclude by reporting a poem, simple and very beautiful, where the author, rather than transfiguring events, is able, through her sensitivity, to grasp their poetic aspect and their unpredictable emotion.

For your eyes

Hold on Nina

hold on alone

so curved

in this pool of pain

if there were a god of dogs …

I have no sacred words

for your eyes

stars without a hut

on the same meridian as the human:

privilege of those who live

is death!

Brown lakes

misted by a backdrop

that the sand upsets

atolls

where my loving you

lost the keys