Flaminia Colella he is young, but he already has several collections of poems under his belt, some of which have also been translated and published in Spanish and English magazines. On Taylor Swift it’s a river in flood. What do you think, we ask you, of these three texts by Taylor Swif and of his poetics in general? Is it sensible that you presented the album as a poetry anthology? “No, because the song is an object, it is an artistic form, a discipline, it is an art that has contours, a history, a very precise physiognomy that may have tangential points of contact with poetry, but always remains something separate. Let’s think about the wonderful lyrics of the Italian song, at Oro di Mango, some texts by Mogol, I can give you many examples: it is poetry, because it almost reaches the top of the tension, it almost reaches the verse. However, this must not create confusion on what is the clear distinction between two artistic fields, between two different types of artistic experience, in terms of writing, in terms of gestures, instruments, metrics, in terms of everything. Poetic art is an art that is absolutely its own, its own, individual, an art that has its own precise teaching, its own tradition and which absolutely does not coincide with the song, although obviously they are, I repeat, contiguous; although they are sister arts. They both work with the word, it’s true, but in the case of the song there is the necessary insert of the music, the fact that the word must be sewn onto the music, supported by the music: net of all the experiments in poetry and music, of accompanied by music, which I also love to do, the song is an operation, a product, an object, an artistic content absolutely distinct from what poetry, the poetic experience, is. Let me be clear: this reasoning of mine is not intended to contain any value judgement. There is a high tradition of the pop song, which is what Swift doesit is a great tradition, a great artistic possibility, a great source of beautiful experiences, beautiful operations, beautiful experiments. We are on the concept of popular music, which is like the popular novel. We take Alessandro Manzoni. Manzoni makes an enormous operation from a narrative point of view, but his work is a popular novel, a popular novel done in a conscious manner. Popular song, i.e. pop music, tries to convey content, feelings, which are not simple but elementary. It’s a good thing that the popular song exists, as long as it’s done well. Swift does something that’s good that it exists. She’s a huge pop star. I appreciate the lyrics he writes because they basically deal with the topic of unattainable love, the ultimate love. They speak of love as impossibility, as unattainability, and this is what comes from the experience of ancient tragedy, from the tradition of literature that has to do with the sacred, with the silence of God. The love that cannot be reached, Cruel Summer it is the expression of this, of the love that I cannot touch, the love that somehow remains strange to me, the love that I want but is not reciprocated. The fact that there are singers who, on a planetary, global level, are still able to tell this kind of thing is a good thing that there is, because we encounter something that is part of the truth, of the spectrum of human feelings. Let’s think about the text of Anti-hero. There is another type of saving there: it is a song that speaks of the desire to demystify, to dispel the legend. There is someone who wanted to look at himself with a demystifying eye. Let’s delve into the question of myth, even though it is a content expressed in elementary, not complex terms. After all, it is light music, pop music. We always talk about something that must reach the crowds, which must fill the souls of the crowds. But even there we find something that strongly belongs to the exoskeleton, to the DNA of our destiny, to our ancient belonging. The need to undo the myth, to dispel the myth. Love Story instead it is simply a declaration of love by two teenagers, a girl lover, or in any case engaged, who declares herself, recalling the promises of love. Conceptually, a story that comes from the experience of tragedy. Something that belongs to the history of humanity. Ultimately, it’s about something that’s central to all of us.” Could we call it songwriting? I ask Flaminia Colella, or is it too much? She replies that “in short, the distinction is clear. As I said at the beginning, song is a genre, poetry is an art. They touch each other, they can unite, they can possibly dialogue at a very high level, our great artists know how to do it, they try to do it, they have done it, let’s think about Branduardi, let’s think about Battiato, Jannacci, Finardi. Returning to Swift, when she writes songs, there is certainly an authorial moment. this is evident. It’s one thing to listen to Swift’s lyrics, which are absolutely enjoyable, appreciable Beatles, listen to Bob Dylan, Gary Coleman. It is clear that we are talking about different aesthetic levels and artistic experience from the point of view of gesture, depth and research. This is for sure, everything contributes, so to speak, to the possibility of choice of those who approach art. Then poetry can also be spectacularized, think of Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was a legend from which many have taken example. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, etc. He was a madman who I was very much in love with. Dylan Thomas, although he was a poet almost incomprehensible in the language, was greatly pop, he was greatly spectacular. But the spectacularization of poetry always comes later. Poetry has a slow pouring, a pouring that takes place in silence. Poetry doesn’t come out because you imagine yourself projected in front of a huge audience. That is an eventuality that could exist, in the sense that in the end we all try to be read, to reach as many people as possible. It’s clear that if I could, I would go to the crowds like Dylan Thomas, I would put my signature on it and I certainly wouldn’t mind, but be careful about making confusion. The arts have their own teaching, they are all deserving of their own specific dignity to which reference must always be made; then hybridization, contamination is welcome, but always starting from this premise which for me remains fundamental”. The discussion on the birth of poetry is important, fundamental, but then we ask Flaminia how it is possible that Swift, with the sequel that ha, write again in silence. If poetry arises from an internal dimension, while Taylor Swift writes she cannot ignore that her lyrics will end up all over the world.”More than interior, poetry works on intimacy, on memory, on the impression that the world makes on the poet’s soul. Then it can also become external, when it becomes a collective gesture, when it is said, when it is sung. Let’s not forget that poetry was born as an oral form. It was sung and accompanied by the zither, so we don’t do anything new with this musical accompaniment: we do what was done by Homer. But the difference remains. The structure, the tension, the metric, the need to concatenate words in a certain way, to make them happen, their evocative energy: all this in poetry is a specific thing, it is a fact. The song has another type of look, of breath, it lives on something else. Although they are absolutely two tangential areas. When I work with my musician friends and we try to sew words onto lyrics or create musical accompaniment, we are not making the song, we are making a dense word, full of its own specific tension, which is then followed by the music. It’s a different thing. It is not born imbued with melody. If anything, he looks for it”. Poetry has its own substance, in addition to the music that accompanies it. The song necessarily arises with the music.
