Bookreview (Satis Shroff): 'Dancing Winds by Dr. Maria Miraglia
BOOK REVIEW (Satis Shroff)
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Bookreview.by
Satis Shroff: Dr. Maria Miraglia’s ‘Dancing Winds’, Verlag: Writers
Capital Press 2016, 99 pages, ISBN: 978-93-86163-68-4, Price: $ 12,95
This
book of poems is dedicated to the ‘unfortunate children of Syria who
are suffering for reasons that they are not responsible for. Let the
world wake up to a dawn of peace, nothing but peace.’ (Maria Miraglia).
When you read this book you will not only experience the observation of
the poetess in the outside world that affects the poetic soul but also
into the innermost reaches of the poetic Self which she skilfully
brings to paper. This introspection touches themes that move us all in
these turbulent times such as family matters, separation, decision of a
protagonist to terminate his life, as well as hope in the future.
In
the preface the poetess mentions that this book is a collection of
memories of her beautiful moment with Nature and personal experiences
that are close to her heart, with a hope that the reader should cherish
her memories and experiences.
The author is a cosmopolitan poetess and the founder of World Foundation for Peace.
She was born in Italy and has been a long time member of Amnesty International.
Maria
Miraglia is a prolific writer and has been published in Petah nelle Nu
vole (publisher: Rupe Mutevole, Parma, Italy). Her work‘Whispering
Words’ has been published in the International Anthology of Poetry,
World Anthology of Poems on Global Harmony and Peace, Muse for World
Peace, ‘Just for you, my Love.’ She’s also the author of ‘Le Grande
Opere di Yayati Madan Gandhi.’
Maria Miraglia took part in the 34th Kibatek International Poetry Festival of Arts in Istanbul to represent Italy in 2014 and 2015 at its 38th edition in Izmir 2015.4
Maria Miraglia is the Direttrice Letteraria
of the Pablo Neruda Association based in Crispiano-Taranto, Italy. The
association’s president is Saverio Sinopoli. The two of them organised
the Neruda Award 2017. She’s the author of Antologia Poetica which
accumulates works of poets from the world for which she functions as the
event-organiser and publisher. She’s the founder of the Italian Cultual
Association Pablo Neruda and is also responsible for literature. Maria
Miraglia collaborates with Marguette a Cultural Italian Review, in
addition to Express, International Journal of Multidisciplinary
Research, the International Peer Review and others magazines.
She
was chosen as a featured poetess in Pentasi B World Friendship Poetry
and contributed regularly in many poetry groups in English and Italian
languages. Her poems have been translated into the following languages:
Spanish, Turkish, Albanian and Azerbaijani. She has received several
national and international awards and recognitions for poetry.
Maria
Miraglia graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures and received a
Master’s degree in Evaluation and Assessment at the Aldo Moro University
of Bari, then a Master’s degree in Teaching of Modern Languages at the
University of Rome and the highest-level-certification (HLC) from
Trinity College, UK. She has taught in high secondary schools and was
lecturer in courses for post-graduate students. She has worked as a
tutor in English, Scottish and Irish colleges for Italian students in
collaboration with the Department for Education for studies and projects
relating to language certifications.
The
genre is poetry with gems of observations not only of Nature but also
in-depth views of people dying, suffering and rejoicing in everyday
life. Her poetry reveals an exquisite poetic form of expression in a
language that is a melange of Italian and English with themes from daily
life that have sudden and surprising twists of thought that are
appealing to the reader and she has the ability of making treasures out
of mundane incidents. You can start reading anywhere and your delight is
certain.
Maria
Miraglia is a poetess who has devoted herself to writing verses which
she finds is like bending on herself to ‘listen better to the whispers
of her own soul and reveal its ‘more hidden and secret meanders.’ She
says: at times she experiences a ‘a catharsis’ to turn her gaze inside
to grasp the most intimate emotions.’ She successfully evokes in the
reader emotions of empathy towards others and inspires the reader to
read the poems and look at the world with a tender heart. Maria Miraglia
succeeds in her many poems to do just that.
This
is a work of originality and individuality and the poems evoke a vision
of hope for humanity. There is simplicity, beauty and skill in the
poems penned by Maria Miraglia and her descriptive verses about Nature
provide rare insights into the heart of the poetess, and her empathy for
Nature, the downtrodden of the society and her role as the founder of
the World Foundation for Peace. The poems are replete with figures of
speech, similes, metaphors and rhythm even though they are non-rhyming
in character. There is subtlety and particularity in the writing.
Like
Shakespeare who finds books in the running brooks, Maria Miraglia finds
that everything is bestowed with beauty and describes the ‘tip of the
grass swaying in the loftiest wind.’ She makes a plea to find
contentment in ‘those modest teeasures of life.’ In the case of men who
generally tend to be discontented and eternally in ‘search of something
beyong the very same.’ In this pursuit the male drifts ‘further away
from the beauty of life.’
The
poetess shows beauty in trivial things and in Nature and reveals how
men be contented by learning to see beauty in little things within reach
and not far away. Poetry has enabled the poetess to be contented for a
lifetime.’ She does this by bringing ‘that beauty amidst so-called
insignificant treasures in Nature and life and evokes thereby.compassion
for Nature’s beauty and the underdogs, especially in the comity of
nations where refugees are drowning daily in European waters and are
regarded as liabilities for social welfare states. What emerges is a
kind soul who rejoices about her existence and actively participates and
organises literary events to promote literature and help young poets
and those who had to leaves their homes due to war—through her World
Foundation for Peace.
* * *
In the poem ‘It was Dawn’
the poetess describes a grim atmosphere of a relationship which has
gone asunder. The situation in this relationship between the two souls
is described as being ‘heavy and grim.’ Love has faded away and the two
have diverging interests with nothing in common. Two people who were
perhaps one heart and a soul, as we say in German, have developed a
great aloofness and divergence, as the poetess aptly say ‘like
mountains.’ Silence reigns in this particular world, and it has become
an onerous task to move even the facial muscles in creating a smile,
like sunlight that has vanished. What remains are only two sulky, barren
souls, devoid of love.
It
is a power poem with strong emotions of a protagonist that emerge after
he has made a final decision: to leave the house where the protagonist
has lived with a beloved person but the love has evaporated like the
mountain mist, and what the protagonist remembers is merely the grim and
burdensome feeling. The former unity has given place diversity and the
two souls live in the same domicile –worlds apart. Aloofness has crept
in their lives and has taken the form of an insurmountable peak. The
atmosphere is charged with tension.
‘Never
a word of love, never a smile.’ Silence reigns. The only deliverance
from this ‘everlasting oppression’ would be to run away. The inevitable
day approaches.
The protagonist decides to leave and do it fast at the break of dawn. He closes the door.
Outside,
some street-lights are still burning and lighting some houses but in
his heart is ‘a faint hope.’ Hope of a familiar voice crying out the
protagonist’s name. Nearby, the sea waves thrash on the rocks. The
protagonist shivers with cold in the early morning and hears a clear,
caressing voice from the deep waters, beckoning him to come. He follows
the ‘inviting call.’
The
protagonist’s heart stops beating and the lungs cease to breathe.
Shortly thereafter, the protagonist sees some passersby looking at the
lifeless body and hears their voices whisper from a distance:
‘A drowned man...a drowned man.’
A
beautiful poem full of pain and forlorn hope of a relationship
expressed by the protagonist and the final decision to end a stagnating
and futile relationship.
* * *
‘Special Orchestra’
is a universal nature poem about the chirping birds on treetops and
whispering winds that move the colourful leaves, rain falling on lazy
rooftops and bubbling brooks, lively chatter of waves, buzzing of bees
courting flowers. This is the free orchestra that fascinates and follows
the poetess where ever she goes.
* * *
‘Part of it’
is a wonderful descriptive poems about an uncertain early morning
experience, when birds are still sleeping and the sea calm, the winds
silent. Only a solitary boat going past like an old wanderer and the
poetess hears in the ‘silence, a celestial tune’ in the void’ and feel
to be a part of it.
* * *
‘A Nightingale’ is
a touching Nature poem about an injured bird with snapped wings and the
joy and delight of the poetess who nurses it and says: ‘he still stays
with me singing sweetly among the tree tops of my garden.’ An avian song
of gratitude, indeed.
‘King and Queen’
is a poetic love sans ‘jealousy and betrayals’ in which the poetess
wishes she were ‘Aphrodite, the deity of beauty.’ She writes about the
union of thoughts and emotions and free hearts akin to a magical
alchemy. ‘You and Me,’ says the poetess, a hero and a heroine the main
protagonists of sweet love poems, who rather fancy the stories of Romeo
and Juliet and Leontes and Hermione.
‘Memories’
is about Christmastime in which the poetess says: what remains are the
faint lights in the memory of our lives, where the stars are hidden; the
moon covered with gloomy clouds, once a witness of your stories has now
turned into the guardian of your group of trees.
‘Aliens’
is a touching depiction of ‘men like aliens’ who are suddenly there.
The poetess doesn‘t know who they are or what they say but she feels
deep in her heart what they feel—like an open book, and you can hear the
‘whisper of their souls.’
The
sensitive poetess is, nevertheless, saddened by what she sees and hears
from people around her for their hearts are arid and their minds
corrupt. She thinks it’s a nightmare from which she must wake up. Alas!
Her eyes are wide open and the sun gleams in the sky. This poem depicts
the empathy the poetess feels, and evokes the same in the reader, for
the new migrants to Europe who undertake great perils to reach European
shores only to be ignored or shunned by the people in the foreign
shores. A poem also about the haves and have-nots.
‘Martyrs of human foolishness’
is a moving descriptive poem about the foolishness of men, and also a
plea for peace and brotherhood. It begins with light and candles to show
the way ‘to Pakistani children so they can fly to Heaven’ like a flock
of ascending birds, of the pains and sorrows of their mothers, ‘bent on
their wombs’ once shelters of their tender lives. The sky darkens, men
and women become silent as the massacre and horror takes its toll. The
poetess emphasises the ‘fear of the little martyrs of human
foolishness.’ Cries, violated and immolated bodies, tears, eternal
mourning in the name of a god nobody knows, in the name of hate and
revenge.’ The angels flap their wings in disapproval and beckon the men
to join and shout aloud their outrage and indignation.’ (In reality the
men have saved their skins to reach the shores of Europe and left their
wives and children behind).
The
poem ends with a plea for hope ‘to awaken men to peace and
brotherhood.’ A stirring poem on the necessity of peace, instead of war.
‘That love’
is about time that passes by along with the seasons and life burns out
like a candle and in your mind there flow images of your youth, kept in
tight silence, images of a ‘life never lived.’
‘Again’
conjours the nearness of an elderly man and his failing eyesight, who
longs to see when the final curtain has fallen. On that specific noon
under the shadow of the willow tree, he asks the poetess to describe the
colour of the leaves, of the sun-kissed sea waves. He is fascinated by
the sun and asks her to tell more. She describes all the objects and
things to his heart’s content.
Finally,
in a voice veiled in nostalgia, he says he’s not afraid of death, with
the reassurance that he’d ‘get back to see again’ after his demise. A
pleasant thought, indeed.
‘In
‘Eternity’ the poetess Maria Miraglia looks at the blue eyes of a dear
one and sees the universe, leaves of secular trees and She depicts
herself and the man as playing roles on the stage of life. And as he
looks at her, recollections are revived, even the dead emotions, and she
feels they together belong to eternity.
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