Poetry, according to William Wordsworth, is the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. There is, as sometimes declared, more truth than poetry in this and similarly perceptive observations. However, let us also allow that not all poetry is spontaneous, neither does it always originate in tranquility, as explained by the Introduction and confirmed by the content of this little book.
Poems by Clarice do indeed represent the overflow of feelings, but spontaneous and tranquilly generated, they are not. For Clarice, tranquility was a personally wrestled-out refuge from which any overflow was, carefully calculated and intentionally managed.
Spontaneity is not always good, especially when resulting in a brutally slammed, blink-of-the-eye, heart breaking, catastrophic event upon an unsuspecting twelve-year-old girl; a tragedy which, not only annihilated the present, but forever reconfigured the future. At some time, we don’t know how long following the sudden death of her father, Clarice established some modicum of equilibrium by intentional centering. And she wrote, repeatedly, repetitively extending soulful versifications to those she held dear. To read them, is to become acquainted with those to whom they were written, as well as the one to whom this book is dedicated.
