John Romano
Few collections like this reflect so faithfully the personality and life of their author. A rich and adventurous life his: born poet, forced to flee from a land bloody by conflicts and atavic hate such as Kosovo, landed refugee in the United States and finally became a university professor. Another demonstration that the definition of the USA as a land of endless opportunities is not just a slogan.
These are poems of rare vigor, with which Marinaj explores the entire range of her lived: horror and disgust for war, nostalgia participates but not rhetoric for her country, bitter separation from family and friends, loneliness and lo Lost that not rarely proves who had to transplant in the USA, in the face of an ultra-modern civilization but in which man finds himself mercilessly alone, especially homeless and refugees who try to enter in the hope of a better life.
It is with them that the poet identifies himself totally, and through outrage for their suffering he sarcastically puts the myths of American opulence: the dollar and the fiction of democracy. As inside the open flow of life it is possible to identify moments, encounters and memories, so every poem brings a title that binds it to an instant, a face, a feeling.
The temptation of loss of self also goes through the Author’s personal life, when the perception of the non-sense of a daily life reduced to pure functionality becomes unbearably acute. But here his true greatness of man and poet rescues him: the deep love for his wife, the open gaze on the world like that of children (who are protagonists of a beautiful poem), the contemplation of nature and the cosmos, the tirelessly extruded touch of the artist who accompanies the rhythm of music with lightening images, relives the boundless sweetness of the first loves, immerses himself deep in nature with all his wounds to come out every time recreated.
Let these dense and powerful verses take you offshore. Let Gjekë Marinaj take you inside Beauty.