Review: Collateral of Dina Piera Di Donato

Dear steemit readers. Recently I made a Spanish publication of a poems by this author. The order of these publications has two fundamental reasons. The first is chronological; the poetry book La Sorda was published in 2011 while Collateral was published in 2013. The second reason refers to language; La Sorda is a book in Spanish and Collateral is a bilingual Spanish-English edition. The latter is of great literary weight since it is about poems and I do not have the official certification to make a correct translation of the Di Donato verses.

If you wish to review the Spanish publication “Un acercamiento al poemario La Sorda de Dina Piera Di Donato” you can check the link Here.

The poet and translator Ricardo Alberto Maldonado performed the translation with the contribution of the cuban-american poet Alina Galliano (1950-2017).

DinaPiera Di Donato was born in Venezuela in the town of Upata located in the Bolivar State. Then, he studied in Paris VIII - France where they obtained a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Hispanic American Literature. Subsequently, she has a brief step through Venezuela, in the city of Cumaná, where she works as a professor and researcher at the Universidad de Oriente in the Department of Philosophy and Letters. Currently, she lives in New York City where she continues her literary production in an active way.

Collateral was the winning text of the National Poetry Series' Paz Prize for Poetry. A great aesthetic of language converges with diverse geographies (physical and spiritual). An anthropological-cultural mix, real or fictional, with fabrics from past eras. But it is not about verses anchored to the past, it is about intervening with desires, love and life in the present, recognizing the mark of time.

To read Collateral I suggest that it be understood as an opera, that is, it can be seen in parts but to understand it you have to look at it all. This is Collateral: a poetic opera that in each poem has a part of something bigger.

In this review I would like to share about three or four poems in the book because the idea is not to make an extremely extensive publication but to observe, from my modest point of view, the poetic imaginary of an extraordinary woman. I will start with the poem Beg.

Collateral, P 57

Here the poet gently glides the fact of the death that will come; maybe not now, maybe not today but something normal in life. References such as broken glass shake our memory to understand that it does not refer specifically to the end of the cycle of life but that the gods set traps in that thin thread of breathing or not.

And we can ask ourselves: why gods in the plural? Simply because she accepts the reality of cultural diversity and invites you to understand that her verses go through official mythologies or stories without staying in them.

Collateral, P 67

Secretly, she urges in the corners of each reader who smiles upon discovering the encrypted message. Liverpool / maidens / winter water. A space of life and desire opens in the green prayer. It is a maze of letters easy to decipher if you read carefully because if there is something true in Di Donato's writing, it does not grant you an empty space. Everything is designed for the reader to think.

Not everything is a metaphor in the ingenuity of Collateral. There are phrases directly to the heart or reason that, without fear of being wrong, will enjoy a future of greater audiences.

And Scheherazade tells of a rose´s smile
-Truncated message-
(Fragment, p. 75)

Death arrived
and found me busy
with your lips

Too sublime, I would say, that death advances towards us and that we do not see it because something superior to it is happening. These three verses are of a high aesthetic; They don't have one other word, they are perfect and say more than each word would express.

Some time ago I published a video that I want to share right now. In it I read poems by Collateral (in Spanish) accompanied by images of the Sea of the Gulf of Cariaco. I thought and I think that these blues were a balm for the writer in difficult times. The sea breeze caressed her keyboard whispering what she already knew: it was necessary to leave from there. I gave him a gift at the same time that he thanked me for sending the poems.

Video, my YouTube channel

When I reread the poems of Collateral I shudder the scenarios raised by the author. There is tenderness, uprooting, massmedia, the mother, the beloved, disagreements, parallel universes, intimacy, evocations, etc.

There are several topics that we can find in the work of Di Donato. For the time being, I name a few, but each one immerses himself differently in the Collateral letters.

Collateral, P 77

Only the beginning of this poem is wonderful. Da Vinci, the famous Italian inventor; Tigris, a river that rises on Mount Taurus and flows fast. Four verses that complement each other perfectly to overflow passion.

The artistic scheme of man, in the medieval era, of Da Vinci becomes a literary figure in the imagination of Di Donato. References come from the past but in love he is in front of her and describes him.

DinaPiera Di Donato has not been characterized as an immigrant even in her poems. She writes from Venezuela and from her rhythmic feeling. You may not know how to do it any other way. The verses have to "sound"; That is difficult to explain because she constantly creates a piece of music with each verse.

I would like to finish this tour with the poem Delete (The Fresh Saint) (Fragment, p. 111):

If ours were a love story
I would give you my third eye
my kidneys which filter you out

As I pointed out at the beginning, the entire book should be read to have a correct autopsy of this poems. However, I consider that the poems presented by me in this publication can serve as a mouthpiece to understand the richness of DinaPiera Di Donato's writing.

Not everything that DinaPiera Di Donato produces is a work of art but I have no doubt that her writing is sincere and authentic, and that it will transcend in time.

Thank you for reading. Welcome, your comments.
Infinite greetings and until an upcoming post.

All images in this publication are scans of the book Collateral made by me.