On Poetry and a Reading

The poetry of Adriana Pagnoni, re-read during an event held in her memory in Milan, gave me a starting point, followed by the reading of Versi ritrovati [Rediscovered Verses] (Lorenzetti, 2013). Poetry. I would like to be able to say what it is, but I can only do so by approximation. It is the richest way I know for trying to say the unsayable. If the poet tries - even a little - to say the unsayable, then, to this extentat least, he or she is like a good analyst at work. Sometimes a writer thinks on behalf of the reader who believes that he/she cannot, and/or is afraid to, think. So poetry is one of the means we have for knowing the worlds, following complex itineraries, which often pass through primary processes.

It seems that etymologically, and therefore from the beginning, art consists in knowing how to make. Poiein is «(to know how) to make», like Kunst, «art» in German, with its root in the verb, können, «to be able». The idea which appeared at the start of civilisation seems to me to be this: Art is knowing how to produce what was in one's mind, using one's organs, including the voice. It seems that, until only a few years ago, a division of labour was envisaged: the woman creates children, the man makes things. We have always imagined Homer as a man. Sappho comes later. The man probably produces poetry because he can't make children, partly out of competition, even out of (infantile) envy. Indeed, poetry does have something infantile about it; children like it, and the inner child we preserve in our memory likes it too. From an early age we enjoy the rhythm of nursery rhymes; rhythm is analogous to being rocked, and rhyme recalls the music of the mother's voice. Rhyme is also an opening like the one between our eyelids through which light enters. Creativity is linked to pleasure, to the primitive affects-sensations of which Agostino Racalbuto (1994) has spoken, enchanting and convincing everyone.

Admiration for creativity, with or without envy, is clearly exp