“Songs of gratitude”, the poetics of Franco Arminio

Poet is he or she who "feels" what other human beings struggle to hear. He is the one who sees what for others is still shrouded in fog. The poet is he or she who has the gift of the revealing word, the gift of finding that sound that rings in the heart and echoes endlessly in the mind. Franco Arminio is undoubtedly a poet, because his verses are like the stone that ripples the surface of the pond and stirs the waters. His verses set in motion: emotions, reflections, animate the silence of questions and discoveries. They lead us to seek new certainties and question our immovable milestones.

In his latest collection, " Songs of gratitude " (Bompiani, 2024, pp. 192, also e-book), Arminio invites us to listen to the words. Making good use of them, measuring them out, savoring their meaning and exploring their consequences. In a world, ours, where the immediacy of digital disposables is increasingly replacing dialogue, Arminio calls us to common sense and tradition, a common sense and a tradition that have always seen something magical in the verb , sublime, transcendent. Something sacred.

It is no coincidence that the words that make up his verses are offered to everyone as an opportunity to open our hearts to wonder and brotherhood, they sing about the importance of paying attention to the tiny to feel part of the immense. The burden of the family into which we were born, the struggle to love and let ourselves be loved, the anguished horizon of death that seems to close before every thought - everything is redeemed by the power of a word: gratitude, a predisposition of mind and a feeling that illuminates the hidden gifts in every single day. Arminio writes: “Give thanks,/leave when necessary,/don't bear a grudge,/remember the evil/that you have transformed into good,/free your tenderness,/but study the blackness of the world,/don't hide the discouragement,/thank it , interview him,/don't listen to everything he tells you,/gather the joy of the world,/you can always find some/if you look around carefully."

Arminio thus demonstrates to us how the poetic word can unfold its transformative force: from an intimate experience it becomes communal and asks us to be pronounced as a challenge to indifference, as a form of resistance, as the most beneficial of contagions.