Marc Di Saverio. Crito Di Volta. Guernica Editions. $25, 177 pp., ISBN: 978-1-77183-521-3
Reviewed by: Hollay Ghadery
By the time I was done reading the first page of Crito Di Volta--an epic poem that chronicles the adventures and misadventures of a young man released after a decade in a psychiatric facility--I’d experienced every emotion I would feel over the course of Marc Di Saverio's book.
Exasperation, admiration, and intense curiosity--I ran the gamut from the initial onslaught of simile to a few lines later when I marveled over Di Saverio’s masterful wielding of poetic device to draw a subtle but crucial line between himself, the writer and Di Volta, the protagonist. One is always in control. The other, not so much.
Both are compelling.
Di Volta is prone to manic, overblown sentiment. That opening selection of verse reads, "Flavia, my eyes are as red as sunrise this first time I swallow/my speed and hope.../Teetering on the street like a bull full of swords, the sunbeams/stabbed me". (1)
This sets the stage perfectly for a chief tragedy in Di Volta's life: his passion is also his downfall. Such is the irony with many epic heroes. Odysseus, Beowulf, Rama--their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. For Odysseus, it was his confidence. For Beowulf, his brute force. For Rama, his duty. For Di Volta, his faith in his words--a faith that arguably borders on blinding solipsism.
What grounds the hyperbole of Di Volta’s character is Di Saverio. Using repetition, meter, rhyme, and metaphor, Di Saverio creates breathing space around the vacuum of Di Volta, showing a subtle mastery of narrative and language that brings order and sense to the tale. He reveals, with piercing clarity, some of the murkier sentiments of the sesquipedalian orator.
"Would you rather be the speed of a sunbeam or it's brightness?" (12)
A simple line that cuts to the quick of a block of Di Volta's rambling verse: life is full of impossible choices. It’s a question that speaks to the heart of one’s beliefs in the midst of more cerebral musings.
To be clear: I don't mind the rambling. It is not a flaw of the writer; rather, a crucial, informing part of Di Volta's orphic character. Di Saverio gives us refulgent places to relax and reflect. The narrative pace can be intense, to be sure, but there are always places to catch our breath. Sometimes, it's just a line, and sometimes, there are entire cantos where the pace slows.
This section, “New Years”, is a stunning example of this downshift.
Like the street-stones
during a parade, some minds are disturbed
continually, no one knowing or caring;
I wonder if Charon will ask these transients for coins
or speak to them the first soft words they'll hear since they were
Kids. (20)
This subdued side of Di Volta is where Di Saverio's depth and insight are most clarion. Di Volta is not just a frenetic former-psych-ward patient: a person's mental illness does not define them. In fact, it seems that Di Saverio’s poem would argue that the line between genius and insanity isn’t so much thin as non-existent. We not only contain multitudes but are multitudes, concomitantly.
Unlike classic epics that feature Manichean heroes, Di Saverio's Di Volta is complex and gritty, making him more real and his story more relatable than epics of the past.
I began by saying that by the end of the first page of this poem, I experienced every emotion I would feel while reading the whole of the book. What I didn’t say is that those emotions are the driving forces behind the epic form. You’re not always supposed to like the protagonist. The hero is supposed to infuriate you, endear you and mystify you over and over again and sometimes all at once. This turmoil creates momentum, and in the end, momentum creates an epic worthy of the tradition.