A gift from a woman to all women
Written by Daniela Pronestì
It is not easy to describe an emotion, to find the right words to do so. There is a risk of falling into rhetoric, into simple sentimentality, by seeking a meaning at all costs that does not always arrive. Emotion is born free, impossible to predict: it is an unexpected gift, a continuous discovery, a sudden revelation. It is possible to observe it, see how it evolves, and being actors and spectators at the same time. But when you think of grasping it, of finally having it in your hands, right then it slips away; once, and then again, in a race already lost from the very brginning. Poetry also benefits from this: it helps us understand how indomitable and elusive emotion is, and how much the poet launches himdelf into this same challenge every time, seduced by a force to which he cannot resist.
This book was born from the many challenges that Galina Negruta faced in putting her emotions on paper. To describe them, therefore, to bring them back into the poetic verse, trying not to betray the intensity with which she experienced them. At the beginning, sporadic notes, words that come out by accident, without warning: flowers of the wonder of a little girl who grew up in the pwace of the countryside. Over time, emotions took shape, and with them also words: a river in flood, ink flowing on the paper, pinning down memories, molding joys and sorrows, giving meaning to events.
Galina's need to make poetry a life companion grew over time. Writing becomes like living, looking for words like looking for meanings, embracing emotions and not letting them go. And again: filing, refining, refining the writing, getting to an airy and fluid verse structure. Finding words that are "light" and that can fly but which are profound in meanings to move with agility from one emotional context to another: from nature to love, from the role of a woman to that of a mother, from the story of herself to the search for universal feeling.
Galina Negruta's poems are "circular", as is the book. Circular because they live on returns, on recurring themes, on repeated emotions, in growing intensity. Circular because each poem draws a perfect circle, with alternating rhymes, assonances, alliterations, and a continuous evolution of tactile, visual and sound references. Circular, finally, because the book begins with "I am" and it ends with "my cure", a way of saying that poetry is, first of all, an act of self-love. In the middle, between the beginning and the closing of the circle, there is life, which flows, bringing loves, abandonments, wounds, surprises, and teachings. And as life "happens", Galina "becomes" breeze, feather, wind, sea, leaf; she seeks understanding, truth, harmony in the natural world. But in the real world she struggles with relationships withother peolple: those who cheat, those who don't listen, those who dispense illusions, those who leave.
Galina immerses herself fully in nature; she becomes nature and she feels part of it with all of herself: thus, she becomes a cloud while observing the sky, she becomes a feather to embrace the wind and she feels the rain falling on her face as if it were tears. Around her, the leaves "shout", the oaks "whisper", the dew "cries". The nature is involved in the "show" of her emotions. But the enchantment of this intimate connection with reality would be meaningless if there wouldn’t be love to accompany all her experiences. «Nature would seem all the same / and I would feel sick and defeated» this would happen if there wouldn’t be love within and around her.
Love, therefore, encompasses everything: the good and the bad, happiness and suffering. Love defies division but thrives in multiplication, love is unique, while loves are many. There are loves that 'make you fly’, loves that teach the art of love, loves that imprint indelible wounds, loves placed 'on the bedside table,' loves that travel great distances, loves offered to the stars. There are loves to be embraced with passion, loves that whisper, loves that feed silence; loves experienced, loves imagined, loves stolen; farewells and 'maybe again' loves, 'forever' loves; loves that shield, loves that release, loves that erase; chosen loves, playful loves, loves for the sake of love.
This book touches all the chords of feeling: it talks about passionate love, maternal love, filial love, and universal love. In this case, woman, mother, and daughter: three different roles united by a firm belief in the power of love. As a woman, feelings drive Galina to live conflicting experiences - from the ecstasy of the first encounter to the heartening certainty of having each other, up to the sad epilogue of the breakup - as a mother and as a daughter, she experiences the security of a bond that nothing will ever melt. «Our love is everlasting'', she writes to her daughters, «you have given me the world.»; when she is the daughter, she reserves words of tenderness and gratitude for her mother: "You are spring in the hardest times / you watch over me night and day / you are my idol, you are my gift". Even love for others, for the world in general, finds space in these verses, with the poem dedicated to a friend, the invitation to travel addressed to anyone who wants to welcome it, the reflection on the needs of today's being to find peace once again and to return to "true values''.
The peculiar structure of the book is among the elements that complete the circle, the author introduces each poem to anticipate its atmosphere, emotional notes and to broaden its possible interpretations. The result is a work, once again, circular, which condenses within it lived life, truths and experiences to offer a reflection on the many facets of the female universe. An act of love, a choral breath, in the gift of a woman to all other women.