Andrea Antognini

 

My name is Andrea. It is the only certain thing about me, even if, at times... this is also subject to debate, in that I do not call myself very often and, when I do, I usually do not answer. I live in absence of myself... preferring to delegate my presence to my poetry, my short stories, my tales and my dreams. I believe they can tell my life better than I can.

The real "Me" isn't the person who works in order to live. In fact, if anyone were to ask me: "What do you do for a living?", I would be tempted to answer: "I breathe!". But this would not be the truth: to survive I breathe ... to live, I write. My life is a continual taking of notes, an extreme need of sensations, emotions, to jot down in my notepad, which wait to be violated by Life, by my life... it is the inexpressibility of a thought which escapes ...to run after and capture it, to make the run towards myself real .... or, perhaps, only the dream of my stopover in reality.

I love nature, animals ... and everything that possesses the magic of being uncontaminated by Time, like a fairy tale heard a thousand times and every time leaving me with bated breath, in anticipation of what could happen ... and perhaps will not happen: an escape from consciousness of the banal.

I consider the superfluous a necessity and the everyday manner an optional... a high price being paid for it. But can poetry consider itself a superfluous thing which can be done without? Can a fairy tale be considered something more, when the world manages without love... but does not renounce suicide, the accomplice of Time? I only know that by reading immortal verses ... the anxiety of that Time disappears for a moment, perhaps... but also Eternity's first steps were like this, and the first lasted an instant... and I believe this instant, the first moment to leave its own imprint on Time, was called Poetry!

I am not looking for fame, or success... even if I do not deny that I don't write just for myself. I would be a hypocrite to compare my writings to a Diary, to be kept closed, hidden in a drawer, with the still more secret hope that someone, someday will come across it.

And in fact here I am to present my writings... that I cannot define as "works"... they do not tire me... on the contrary! They do not require a material tangible reward, ... but at the same time, I confess, they are fed by the hope of meeting someone who goes, perhaps, to beat themselves against them... without doing any harm and that a reunion may result from that clash, ...

It needs at least Two to write, but if there were also somebody else beyond God ... it would not be a bad thing... And it is that other somebody who I am addressing, thanking them for having dedicated a little of their time to mine... that time which will not be lost, because if I write, and I will continue to do so, it is also for you, whoever you are!

 

I would like not

To have to write

my life,

and let it be whisked away

without a word...

but if I were to stop, maybe

it would write mine for me.