About Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto:
GIOVANNA CRISTINA VIVINETTO was born in Sicily in 1994. Interlinea Edizioni published her first book of poems, Dolore Minimo (Minimal Pain), in 2018.This debut is the first collection of Italian poetry on the subject of trans identity. The book has won several prizes, including the Viareggio Opera Prima in 2019. In February 2020, BUR Rizzoli published Vivinetto’s second book of poems, Dove Non Siamo Stati (Where We Have Not Been). Vivinetto lives in Rome.
GABRIELLA FEE has published poetry in The Common, Guesthouse, Michigan Quarterly Review, Sprung Formal, and elsewhere. They received the 2021 Elizabeth K. Moser Fund for Poetry Studies Fellowship and the Benjamin J. Sankey Fellowship in Poetry from Johns Hopkins University, where they are a fellow with the Society of Fellows in the Humanities.
DORA MALECH is the author of four books of poems, most recently Flourish (Carnegie Mellon, 2020) and Stet (Princeton, 2018). Her honors include a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, an Amy Clampitt Residency Award, and a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Writer’s Fellowship, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry. She teaches at Johns Hopkins University and edits The Hopkins Review.
The truth is names choose us
even before they’re pronounced.
On the walls, at the curbs,
in the vases of carnations and hydrangeas,
in the lines of water that streak
the windows each morning, in
the laced-up shoes, on the buzzers
of doorbells, in the abandoned
stations. On everything a name
gathers. It shines from everything.
And one who flees names knows
that none escape being hailed,
that names tie knots
of truth cinched tight,
constricted syllables shaped
too tight to talk. Shaped to hurt.
The names that chose me
found no corners to illuminate.
Their meanings receded
as I dug into each
letter. I was looking for loopholes,
for arcana to examine
to make sense of myself.
I renounced them and with them
the arrogance of definition.
The foolishness of searching
words for truth.
The truth is reality
slept right under my nose,
buried in a mute heap
of names.
translated from the Italian by Gabriella Fee & Dora Malech
Translation
|
First posted on 11.07.2022