These words guide you:

… here’s to chaos,
here’s to spontaneity and spunk
mixing gaily
And to more stolen apples,
taken freely –

Yes. Please. To more of this!

This book of poetry invites you into the subtle porosity of the present, found in small moments: on street corners, between strangers, friends, and in the many ingredients you might add to your borscht soup. The poetry reminds, gently, that there is only this world / … ; only today / …; only we two, face to face and as you return to the present and recall that you must make a choice between one thing and the other, it is only to realize that you are now in a vast field, without any clear paths in sight. So you must chart your own way forward now, encountering the textures, tastes, smells, and sounds with every step.

I was first introduced to Vincenzo’s writing by way of his essay, “Take Your Time: The Seven Pillars of a Slow Thought Manifesto.” As articulated in that essay, slowness offers a way out of routine and a way into improvisation. Vincenzo’s writing invited me into a conversation with time that was “off the dial,” where I was encouraged to, as he put it, “recapture the time of childhood… entering into a space where things were simultaneously absolute and complete.”

I was reminded of the musician Brian Eno who once said, “I prefer to shoot an arrow and paint the target around it, I make the niches in which I finally reside.” Eno’s approach to target practice is much like Vincenzo’s insistence that we must trust the moment we are in: “absolute contingency and absolute fidelity,” the meaning arising out of our being present, naming what is happening, and being faithful to its message. I know from firsthand experience that it takes a great degree of courage to have such absolute certainty within the uncertainties of life, to believe in the true potential of this life, this earth, this day. It is this faith that is also at the heart of this new book of poetry.

In our current times, faced with tumult, we instinctively try to conquer and “win” over the unknown. We are at war with what we can’t control and don’t understand. Instead of communication, we arrive at division and even open hostility. Thankfully, Vincenzo’s poetry proposes an antidote to this discord, an arrow in a new direction, in the form of a recipe. The layered cake of mille-feuille or as he knew it to be named in Italian, millefoglie. “Layer over layer – and the diverse tastes it delivers,” this desert must be eaten by bringing “your fork all the way down to the plate, making each bite a cross-section.” In one bite, we are recalled to ourselves, taken back to childhood, restored by the savory sweet creamy taste. Attuning our senses to these events of life, Vincenzo carefully sutures together the meaning of this sweet nostalgia, with the memories and histories of the places where we live:

Now if you want to see city layer cake, go to Mile End, go to Little Italy ….
Neighbourhood layer cake is edifying. You eat history.

TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE lives in a paradox. The poet writes in the belief that “there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are only two kinds of people — and those who don’t.” In other words, there are people who live for the poetics of the layered cake and the chaos of the Borscht soup “where you can throw everything into it” and there are those who just don’t savor these moments the same way. Nonetheless, the writing keeps pointing past this binary, showing the reader how to outrun their own determinism. In the poem, “Take a little time out of your day,” the narrator describes an unusual encounter:

I was on my way to eternity
when she said …
take a little time out of your day
and I stopped for a moment
to look

In this poem, the narrator encounters a woman while he is on his way to eternity. In this singular moment, he “saw something in her eyes / a glint of something/I brushed aside”. In a rush to eternity, the moment passes him by “it grew cold / I didn’t let it blossom”. The narrator glimpses into the eternal, but he doesn’t have time for it.

The one thousand petals of the mille-feuille can only be tasted slowly, with time, with delays and the willingness to miss appointments, even those we’ve made with eternity. In these pauses, a more aphoristic truth that is closer to the wisdom of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets might emerge, in which Eliot reminds us,

… the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here

Like Eliot, the poetry in this new collection inducts the readers into a kind of time that emerges from pattern and rhythm, reminding us of the vistas we are capable of experiencing right here and now.

If the reader seeks further guidance, the final poem provides a certain answer: Don’t wait! Don’t wait for miracles to encircle you, don’t wait for the angels to descend from above, or for the saints to save you …

there are no miracles,
no angel of history,
no saints to intercede

It is clear that there is only here, there is only now, and the poetry is just an arrow flying in the wind:

there is no poem,
no numinous opening
;only this prosaic moment

The reader may wonder, is this disheartening? Or is it an open door to renewal? Reader’s choice. But if you seek guidance, the answer still remains – don’t wait!

there is no promise
of a better world,
of bright deeds dancing in a green bay

Only this world, only this moment, only this singular and yet ever-changing opportunity.