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.

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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.

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‘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.

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‘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.

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‘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.