INTERVIEWER

First, thank you so much for taking the time to engage in conversation with me. I’d like to start, with the poems published in Poetry International, which are from “Ai Tezzi,” the first section of In quota. The poems, specifically “Alla baita del Vittore” (‘At Victor’s Cabin’) and “Anticipo” (‘Early’), were very grounding for me as a reader. I was taken with their simplicity, which as I note in my introduction, signified a sincere trust in the reader, and also established an immense vulnerability both in the speaker’s voice.

When you were putting this collection together, what informed your decision to begin with the poems within “Ai Tezzi” and how they might set up the journey that follows?

PAOLA LORETO

Thank you, Hailey, and thanks to Poetry International for granting my poetry the space of these translations and interview.  I titled the first section of In quota “Ai Tezzi” (“At the Tezzi”) because I wanted to name it after this very small and isolated mountain locality where I have been spending a large part of the year for decades now. It lies in the farthest part of one of the two valleys departing from the Lombard city of Bergamo, the Alta Val Seriana (the high part of the valley that takes its name after the river Serio).

The familiar way of indicating the place, “ai Tezzi”, instead of the entire name Tezzi Alti is a first suggestion of a familiar atmosphere. The section exceptionally abounds in toponyms and people’s proper names—some of them real, some imagined—because I wanted to establish, at the beginning of the book, its setting: a small, high-mountain community (“in quota” means “high altitude”). It is set against the other vein that runs in the book, which is more meditative and highly metaphorical and metaphysical.

The physical and mental, even spiritual, space I have been inhabiting at “the Tezzi” has nourished my creativity, made my writing (both academic and creative) possible thanks to the solitude and the proximity to the natural, physical environment I could enjoy, but at the same time has offered the chance to cultivate few, very essential relations with the local people. The tiny, minimalist cottage of Vittore, up in the “Prati di Vigna” (Vine Fields) of “Victor’s Cabin”—more of a stone cabin, in fact, than a cottage—is the destination of my daily walks in the woods, when I take a break from work or writing. I chose to open the book with this poem to signify the simplicity, and intensity, of our perceptions in nature, and the power of sensory perception to vividly evoke memories and personal history.  By the way, the Tezzi Alti (Upper Tezzi) may be reached by a winding road of 3,6 kilometers that rises 300 meters above the village across the bridge from the provincial road that runs in the valley floor.

INTERVIEWER

I particularly love what you said about the power of sensory experience to evoke memory and history—which I feel is accomplished beautifully in this section. Also, how you describe the interpersonal relations that appear in this work as essential. I found myself very enamored by the sense of intimacy and ritual that I find established in this section, wherein a brief interaction with a neighbor feels just as important and savored as the speaker stopping to appreciate wild mushrooms growing.

Building off this, I’m curious if you could speak to how you determined the book’s overall structure in four sections: Ai Tezzi, Libro di Tobia, A Te, and Libro delle Ore? 

LORETO

I would say that by contrast and complement, the sections heighten their reciprocal meaning and spheres of reference. A Te is surely the most metaphysical section. As you may realize, this is implied in the similarity and difference in the sound texture of the two titles (Ai Tezzi/ A Te). Whereas the allusion to the Tezzi implies a collective dimension, the apostrophe “a te” (“to you”) suggests a dialogue with a transcendent presence that many poets have sensed in the verticality, immobility, and silence of a mountain landscape. 

The Book of Tobias  alludes to the biblical book. I was struck by the quiet way Tobia has of obeying his father’s commands, and finding, in this “blind” obedience—which I interpret as an Emersonian way of “yielding to things”—his own happiness (besides allowing that of his family and people). I was fascinated with the healing power of Tobia’s indefatigable meekness. So, this section hints at a love relationship, always set in a mountain ambiance and narrated through the imagery of climbing or walking in the mountains (on foot or on artificial fur skins for skialp skiing).

Finally, the last section is a collection of meditations triggered by a keen observation of particular landscapes in the mountains of Northern Italy, ranging from the domestic, homely (but especially dear) Bergamasque Orobie to the majestic Dolomites, to Mount Rosa (across the Aosta Valley and Piedmont). It aims at rendering an ecocentric attitude in relating to the “earth others,” as Rosy Braidotti has called them, that populate a mountain environment, including the rock I touch when I climb and the snow I tread on when I cross a 20-centimeter crest on the Lyskamms, and the wind that is sometimes gentle and sometimes rough with hikers. “Libro delle ore” refers to the Book of Hours that was used to pray the canonical hours in the Middle Ages. It suggests an attitude of giving thanks for the beauty of what is, which I find particularly evident in the mountains. 

INTERVIEWER

It is illuminating to hear how you think of each of these sections working individually as well as in conversation with one another.

When you spoke of rendering an “ecocentric attitude in relating to earth others,” I couldn’t help but think about this “yielding” or surrender taking place throughout the work. There is a sincere reverence to the land, as essential to the mode of ecocentrism employed here. I even started to think about the act of conveying this deeply personal, near-religious experience with and through the land within the space of a poem as its own means of translating.

I wonder if you might speak a bit further on how you approach this mode of ecocentric writing, and how perhaps, how you find yourself considering your role as human speaker, or perhaps a sort of translator in conveying these meditations?

LORETO

I wrote “Essere creatura,” the first poem of the Book of Hours section, well before I started engaging in ecopoetry as a scholar. Assuming an ecocritical perspective in my academic work made me realize that I had always, spontaneously, disposed myself towards the “earth others” in an ecocentric perspective–that is, that I had been writing ecopoetry for a long time. It has just always been immediate to me to relate to natural elements on an even ground, as peers. It is not enough to say that we belong to nature: we are nature.

In the poem “Uno guarda uno”–which alludes to Robert Frost’s poem “Two Look at Two,” I suddenly encounter a mountain goat and talk to him and lend him a voice–in a way similar to what Mary Oliver does in her best Dog Songs poems. I am aware of the impossibility of knowing what crosses an animal’s mind, and that recognizing this limit is a form of respect, of acknowledgment of their independence and autonomy from the human. But I also believe that most of the time we can imagine what they feel, if not think. And that this “leap of the imagination” may be our chance to cross over to them and try to share part of their Umwelt, make space for it in our own mind. Empathy is a form of love. 

INTERVIEWER

What inspired your return to the work of In quota [BF1] , to publish a new, extended edition? And how did you find this process, returning to the particular headspace it may have called for, as some time has passed since its original publication in 2012? Did you encounter any surprises or challenges?

LORETO

The publisher of In quota suggested that instead of reprinting the book, which was sold out, we could think of a new edition, because although my following books deal with different themes (case | spogliamenti explores a possible response to a deep existential crisis, while Miei lari is a familial book, retracing the salient moments of my family history and rethinking about the dynamics of their relationships), I have never ceased to write about my mountain experience and epiphanies. So, the new In quota is an enlarged edition, titled In quota e alter ascese, with a comment on the first book by contemporary Italian poet Milo De Angelis. It was good to go back to these poems and find them as vital in their signifying thrust, and as revelatory, to me, of their deep, allusive meanings, as they felt when I conceived of them. 

INTERVIEWER

Early in my process of translating your work, which as you know was the beginning of my journey in the art of translation entirely, I started to notice myself gravitating toward a more brief line in my own work, taking on a more restrained voice that contrasted the style I had been writing in at the time. I started to find myself able to tap into different subject matters than had felt accessible to me before—even writing in the mode of the pastoral and finding a deeper inspiration from my own landscapes.

As you have done your own extensive work in translation, most recently completing a translation of Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, Primitivo Americano, I was wondering if you too have your own experience with this to any extent? That is, as you continue to write and translate, do you notice your work in translation having an impact on how you continue to approach your own poetry? Do you think the act of translating a work has any different or greater impact on craft than simply reading and being inspired by your favorite poets?

LORETO

It has, because I think that translating a poem is the most profound way of reading it. Translation is interpretation, as is reading (and talking, for that, as George Steiner has taught us in After Babel). Translating, though, involves an active interpretation that never stops until a form of understanding is reached, convincing enough to push us to an attempt to render it in another poem, written in the translating language. 

I don’t think I have been pushed to write like A. R. Ammons, after having translated him, or Philip Levine, or Mary Oliver, but surely, I have been influenced by Emily Dickinson, or Robert Frost, on whose poetry I wrote book-length studies as a young(er) scholar of American poetry. I’m used to saying that I “lived with them” for years, which accounts for the intimate knowledge of their poetry I acquired in the time I stayed with their poetry every day for years.

Of course, one may sense a kind of affinity with some particular poetry—I personally felt the strongest affinity with the kind of elliptic, dense, oracular poetry of Dickinson. I believe it is more a matter of confluence than influence: you just walk towards what calls you, and it calls you because it sounds so much like your own inclinations. With Mary Oliver, it was the same, although, her American Primitive being the first poetry book I translated entirely, I’m inclined to think the opposite: that I could think of being able to do it justice because my style was not too distant from hers. 

INTERVIEWER

Will you share a bit about your most recent projects, perhaps your recently published book, Miei Lari released this past year.  What was the inspiration behind this book and how do you see it working in conversation with your previous works? 

LORETO

Miei lari is a familial book. It arose from the sudden realization that my family had completely disappeared: with the death of my mother, in 2019, I had lost all of them, and I was left basically alone. I was spontaneously led to think about what had been, in terms of events (one, the killing of my sister in 1993, was tragic and marked the family history forever), and especially in terms of the complex dynamics that unfold within the physical/mental, original, shared space of habitation that a family is. For this reason, I always emphasize that the book was not meant as a denunciation of violence against women (which was the priority when things happened) but as a further space, so much more relaxed and pacified, for thinking about our reciprocal relations. Can we think of family relations outside of the tensions that regret, sense of guilt, frustration, incomprehension, anxiety, even excessive empathy and care may cause in them?

The trigger was looking at an old family album and interrogating those figures with the intent of imagining what each one’s expectations had been. A photo can be so revealing of a person’s character and state of mind, in the figure’s posture and face expression and body language. I started talking to my father and mother and sister projecting us back to the situations and occasions that were portrayed. This produced the dramatic monologues of the section Album that I felt were working because they could become intense. The same happened with what became the section Corrispondenze, where I continue to address some of the members of our family. But the book opens with the section Arcadia, in which I try to evoke the apparently infinite horizon of expectations, and the immediate life of the body, of the Golden Age of childhood and adolescence.

So, Miei lari is also, and in a large part, the attempt to draw the parabola of a life, an existence, in its crucial stages. The section Elegiaca follows, which is the fall of Arcadia, with its poems expressing the grief for the loss of my sister, which were written, and carefully selected, in the span of thirty years. This is a reflection on how we deal with a time of radical crisis, when the world we used to know is completely upturned, apparently destroyed, and we go out “upon Circumference,” to say it in Emily Dickinson’s words in her memorable “I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched –” As in Dickinson’s poem, the implicit, veiled, hypothesis is that grief, and crises, may admit us onto a new horizon, which may let us imagine ways of finding out “what to do with a diminished thing,” to add a powerful image by Robert Frost.

INTERVIEWER

Thank you so much, again, for being so generous with your insights and experiences. I am very grateful for and moved by your words and am sure many others will be as well. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to leave readers with? 

LORETO

Maybe one that comes from the train of thoughts that your questions initiated. I sometimes think I am composing one poem, which started with “Orzo Maturo,” the first poem I wrote, and will end when I stop writing. I am thinking of the recurrent, evolving images, the features and development of style, and the deep thinking that makes an individual poetry. There is a kind of agency in the writing, which does not belong to the poet, but to the language. In the best case, the poet gradually becomes conscious of it and learns how to ride it, rather than rule it. It’s fascinating, and reassuring, as a sign of confirmation of the goodness of the ongoing work. Thanks for the hospitality, and the listening.