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Rating: "Love is" cannot be said; just like "life is", "faith is", or "music is", those three words cannot stand in the same sentence in that order. But man is indeed insignificant, it's well known, and needs labels, catalogs, descriptions, even reaching the paradox of trying to describe the unknown, as in the case of love. Endless hordes of men have tried and try love, and there is no doubt that this feeling must be called such, but none of them have been able or can describe it with absolute precision. Therefore, we must content ourselves with those who at least attempt it: poets. Certainly, poetry is not only about love, but it has always been the main subject of the discipline, if we can call it that.
Among the many poets, I want to briefly talk about Jacques Prévert (04/02/1900 - 11/04/1977), or rather about the collection curated by Leopoldo Carra "For You My Love", which gathers some of the love poems of the French writer. As the subtitle says, they are poems "for young lovers", with which Prévert tries to describe the impossible situations created by the most mysterious and incredibly engaging feeling that a man can ever experience in his brief earthly stay. The author, with not too high-flown words and a simple yet not trivial construction of sentences, explores some of the endless aspects of love. Carra divides the collection into chapters "The Fleeting Moment", "These Men!", "Lost Loves", "The Joy of Living", "Down with the Moralists"; each of these titles is explicit enough to need no comment. As the last title and the end of the poem I wrote at the bottom of this review suggest, Prévert often has to deal with a still 19th-century mindset, but this does not prevent us from feeling emotion and participating in the scenes described, and this is probably because love is -here's man's need to define- eternal.
A well-curated collection, with very few low points and many phrases that immediately find that direct path to the heart that every form of art seeks.
I was naked in his hands
under the skirt lifted
naked as ever
my young body
was all a celebration
from the tips of my toes
to the hairs on my head
I was like a spring
leading the dowsing rod
of the dowser
we were doing wrong
the wrong was done well.
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