For the Baptism of Our Fragments by Mario Luzi

For the Baptism of Our Fragments Reviews

• 
  Zachary Lacan

  it's rare to find poetry which opens up so many emotions, and lends itself so much to exegesis. the poems leap from the pages, which is cliche but the following point is not, the meaning reinvents in lines crafted to give form not just to Mario Luzi to the vision of the people. The poet speaks with an authority conferred by fate and providence human and divine.
• 
  ernest (Ellen)

  The titular poem is exactly as it promises: a metamorphosis of life and eternal mutability, a ballad of consonant noises streaming by like "thoughts drawn on the string / of endless questioning".
  
  He speaks about the endless torment of the past and memory (the "dark body of metamorphosis"). Yet spring comes, the ardor of unconditional love alights our eyes, the soul blossoms, and suddenly like a caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis we are freed from our past. The narrator is the sleepwalker(watcher), realizing that his insomnia, that semi-conscious state of being, has been shaken by the image of something so alive. He, too, has been freed. How is it possible that we can destroy every fiber of our being, every cell in our body, and still emerge as the same being?
  
  We are the mutable and the eternal. We are constantly changing yet irreplaceable. We must drown in the sky of our collapsing entities, and appear a covey flocking from the winter to another spring.
• 
  Mills College Library

  851.912 L979i 1975