Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Doebler/Cini 171
case)? Rather, here she is dealing with phylogeny, and the “whole
first-childhood”—despite the singular—is configured as an infinite,
repeating process: “before the erect body / of word....”. I think of
the famous Freudian game of the spool, fort/da, reading this report:
“playing / as it is made / of wood or plastic // the rule of the
game / to screw and unscrew / is set // the object / does not surprise
/ done and played / it is shattered / the action /make them
play.”
A few pages later: “altered / enlarged / masculine / stolen ...
of the same age / denoted ...”: the oscillation of grammatical gender
is not always unmistakably anchored to the referent. Who, what is
the altered with which the poem opens? The logical oppositions,
the sexual oppositions neutralize each other in a fluidity or symmetry
which is, all told, the distinctive character of Mara Cini’s poetic
speech.
Throughout the collection Years and Other Rites, something
moves continually, changes place, leaving nonetheless a light yet
indelible trace (syntagmata of white) where it settled, so to speak.
Could these be the “friendly places” of substitution that the opening
page speaks of? “grown/ fallen / faded”; “collected / imagined
/ watched”: the feminine endings beat with so much greater insistence
(even if softened) because each predicate occupies the entire
space of a verse. They are empty predicates in a certain sense, from
which one gathers the pure, libidinal charge.
The perceptible, the world, offers itself as a container into which
elements undergo mutations—some disappear, others replace them
(“substituting rapid / densities / no longer faithful / to the ancient
collection”). Poetry is the force of such displacement: a somewhat
summary definition that applies to whatever Mara Cini writes, and
perhaps beyond.