Così parlo di te e di me, provincia/ mio utero e Moloch di batteri e licheni,/ di statali artisti e giocolieri,/ ristoranti che urlano al taglio del cordone/ usuraio, magi che arrivano/ al momento della crocifissione/ per sperperare denaro/ e lasciare anziani davanti/ a una televisione senza eredi.
In his preface to the small anthology of Enrico Barbieri dedicated to the Province, Giulio Greco speaks of civil poetry. In fact, although the semantic link with the places and the issues of the local community both thematic and therefore direct the author's relationship with his own civilization is upside down. These poems do not express the soul of places lived and the collective breath of his experience in his dialogue with the land in which you live. Following a reverse path, outside-in, are locations shown that end up being a sign and symbol of how the subject perceives himself and reality. The only civilization that comes out in this collection is the inner author. Rather than civil poetry, objectively extrovert, the Province of Barbers is impressionistic, introverted. The landscape is just the transition from the outside world to the inner life of the author.
And I'm tired, I'm / Millepiani underground in a tower / ivory turned to darkness. The characters and environments of the Province of Barbers are only apparently objective, universal, equal in all the provinces that we have known. If we stop at appearances, we risk not understanding the effective representation of poetic Barbers. This might even seem, on the contrary, expressionist, too, sarcastic. We need the poetic medium to access the mismatch of the author. This Province is horrible because this is the look of Barbers. And it is this condition of horror that has a collective breath, though few will ever be willing to admit it. The author expresses, along the dead line of sociology and ideology, a rift between the individual and its external environment, transformed and rendered uninhabitable. It indicates rather a sprain, a detour all anthropological. We who we have become and have become hideous, I know but I will not admit it.
Here the author reveals it with irony but mercilessly. I am a wolf, are a dog, / I am the sick dog without a master / angrily contagious and crazy hungry. Compared to the previous test poetic, this new collection of Barbers is further flattened on the page, lost (deliberately) plasticity denotative. The verse goes linearly to parataxis, giving the images constructed a static camera that makes the reader pause. It 'a poem even more rarefied but corroborated authenticity and evocative. The horror inner and newspaper is no longer exorcised from the forms and volumes of poetry "oral". It is accepted as known. After all we all know in the Province. And everything is more acceptable. The violence here is not case sensitive: / (...) And 'the shadow of a group of boys / that is chasing their equal. / The mayors play Lego, / in darkness and silence. This is a collection of poetry calendar, he said. But private, not collective. Human, not at all social. Supportive but not pacified. The Province of Henry Barbieri is a world of "freaks" who hold hands. All this is horrible, but it's our world. The night goes away, / hold my hand / I loved you always. / The night goes away, / will be short, always / it was for us / when we loved each other / before the illness.
Pasquale Vitagliano