Thank you NetGalley and Antepost for the review copy of Stefania Lucchetti’s newest poetry collection “Blind Corners.”
I have been a fan of Stefania Lucchetti since I read her collection “Coffee Stains On My Books.” This is her third collection that I have read, and so far my favorite. In her introduction, Lucchetti says, “We are made of stories.” I feel this is entirely true. Who we are, what we believe, what we learn, all of it is influenced by stories we are told, some true, some make-believe, but all of those stories coalescing into each of us as a person.
Lucchetti reminds us that “What carries humanity forward/ is the human capacity/ to underestimate the effort a project requires/ to forget the pain suffered/ in past disappointments/ to keep moving […]” She cautions us to recall “How many mistakes are born from the presumption/ of thinking we understand” when we judge people without knowing their stories.
Stefania Lucchetti writes about change, about opening our eyes to see around those blind corners we didn’t know were there. She takes readers into the mind of the poet, allowing us to see things not as they always are, but as they could be if we were to understand the breadth of human emotion. She contemplates the various guises she inhabits, “Mother of three children/ professional, poetess, / sometimes even, / an actress;” and ponders how to do it all without losing sight of who she is behind each of these masks. I think many women can relate to this: the mother who writes her novel in the evening after work, after the children are in bed and the dishes washed; the artist that paints only when the children are at school; the scientist balancing research with band practice.
So many of these poems related to my own thoughts and the various paths my life has followed. Stefania Lucchetti is a poet who writes of the life we live, not in allegory or metaphor, but as a person with hopes and sorrows just like our own.
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