TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Franca Mancinelli

themwith cuts and amputations. I had begun to consider how the contents of an experience, however traumatic, actually mattered to no one. If I intended to be listened to by someone else, I had to be ready to lose the more personal things I had brought with me, details that only diverted attention. It was surprising to discover how I could let go of parts of my experience, freeing myself from it in order to save it in a form that beckoned to others’ eyes, like wet land sniffed by a snout. And also to discover how the part of my life, which had not started speaking and continued to be protected and withheld in my silence, opened within writing, re- emerged healed. The language that I had found both freed and protected me. After this journey through my wounds, I would not have imagined writing another book of poetry. However, froma painful break-up and from the crisis that followed it, Pasta madre (Mother Dough) was born. Biographical facts were now almost transcended. By writing, I had finally managed to fulfill, in part, my greatest desire: to free myself from myself, without any tragedy, lightly touching the strings of joy. Letting trees and animals live again within my contours, come through me and include me again in their flow. I did this by continuing to occupy, as in life, the minimal space of sound and sense: the longest texts barely exceed ten lines. And silence is everywhere, between the words and the seven sections that are comprised in the book, like brief islands amid whiteness. Writing compensates for no loss. The silences into which you fall remain silences, with unreality approaching and threatening you, with other people withdrawing towards themselves or coming forward to take your words as well, your possibility to exist. But writing nourishes you and cares for you like a mother. Writing takes on your stammers, your stubs of phrases, and gives back to 134