On the book “The Sounds of My Soul” by the poet Mimoza Eleona Osmani

If you dip your pen in a multicolored poetic river, you will undoubtedly be able to write a rainbow. The truth is that today I am going to cast a rainbow of thoughts, from the flow of the springs of my knowledge, for a poetic river by the poet Mimoza Osmani. It is true that I do not know the author and have never met her. What I am saying might also be a lie. Because to hold four books by an author in your hands and say you do not know her seems a bit contradictory. It is contradictory because the portrait, the soul, the art expressed in four voluminous books is the outer and inner beauty of a poet, artist, or painter. In this specific case, I do not know how to define the author in question well and accurately: is she a poet, is she a painter, is she a composer, is she a biblical book of advice, feelings, and expressions that anyone could take as a lesson or a guide in their life?

Tell me, please, what name should I give my writing, just as the author has named her work?

The author says her poetic song is called “The Sounds of My Soul,” but, making a deep analysis of these sounds, I think the title seems poor, because her sounds do not only hold Mimoza’s soul, but they also hold colors, they hold space, they hold within them the sweetness of the word, the beauty of thought, the attire suited to the poetic season and the message, but also the nourishing value for the many readers of her sounds.

Let me be a little clearer and more truthful in what I am writing.

For anyone who reads this book of 90 poems, which in fact are not all poems. They are all poetic art, but among the many poems, we see and read sifted and named art, which perhaps the author herself did not have the intentions I mean to attribute to her when she wrote them and put them on paper in moments of inspiration. Among her dozens of sounds, there are lyrical poems, national poems, family and social poems, and to break the monotony, there are fables, which make you laugh with the hot “pepper” of criticism. I know, you who are reading this will say: “Empty praise, as often happens in the reviews we are used to reading.” But I say the exact opposite, and I will try to convince you of this. We are entering the essence of Mimoza’s pen, and from there, together, we will find the secrets of her art, its beauty, or even criticism if necessary.

Here is one of her poems (I am taking the most necessary poems for our analysis):

GRAPES NEED HANDS, NOT EYES

When I tell you to kiss my breast,
Do not play coy, as if you don't care.
Suck at my neck like a vampire,
Cast your gaze on the garden everywhere.

Like a snake along the alleyway,
With a tongue that knows no limit.
Whether there is snow or icy frost,
Throw kisses on the stalactite!

In fact, the poem above does not need much commentary, but I look at it from another perspective besides the artistic one. In this poem, the author Mimoza, just as she has the name and colors of a decorative tree, so too is her song decorative, full of colors and message. But in this poem, we will not cling to the decor, but to the essential. Through her verses, the author breaks taboos.

The fragility and sweetness of her expression cross the boundaries of the ordinary. The comparison to a stalactite makes you shiver while reading (for one who feels beautiful poetic art). She makes you shiver from the fragile feeling with which she describes it, dresses it, compares it, and makes it more beautiful in art than it might be in reality. Mimoza breaks the rules of tradition, supposedly with “shamefulness,” or the excessive baring of the poem's fragile chest. Before she takes up the pen, calls upon inspiration, and puts her thoughts and art on paper, she strips her soul bare, dresses it in beautiful poetic colors, without thinking about how readers will view her word and her poetry. This makes her poetic art more beautiful, more daring, more truthful. Amidst the demand and the game of love, she also introduces the artistic game when she says, “When I tell you to kiss my breast, do not play coy, as if you don't care,” a natural game that suits her chosen word to build the thought and express beauty.

I know you will say, you have found one poem, and your analysis is beautiful! But here lies the secret of success. In Moza’s art, in her muse, in her fantasy, the figures intertwine as if by a magical mind and hand, without asking about the opinions and criticisms that follow, nor about the praises. This is not just one poem, because after it come many sisters that shake your soul to its foundations when you read them. Let us read below:

AS LONG AS I BREATHE I HAVE NO REGRETS

The world does not catch my eye,
Sin is for the living.
It is an “orange” on wheels,
Sometimes climbing, sometimes descending the stairs...

The world does not catch my eye,
When I am madly ablaze.
Lips glowing like embers two by two,
Leaving a heat that makes the flesh tremble...

The world does not catch my eye,
Kiss me, you said, even though you are not mine.
Who has the strongest laws,
Did we not know from the beginning?

The world does not catch my eye,
Let them say he was married.
Let them point their fingers... (him)...
Are they themselves any purer?

Behind closed doors the world does not know,
All that glitters is not gold.
Pained smiles are not cakes,
They are an “umbrella” without happiness...

So the world does not catch my eye,
When I have fallen in love like a boy.
The soul is a free wind that blows,
Memories a snorting horse.

The world does not catch my eye,
I seethe like soured yogurt,
The heart is not a drawer with a padlock,
It is a bird meant to fly....

Dwelling on this poem, I can say that it stands so high artistically, but also in other ways, that our sleepy, scattered, and often sluggish criticism must turn its eyes to beautiful art, to encourage it, to give it the place it deserves, but also to make it an example of contemporary art. Another door that is still taboo is burst open and broken by the poet Mimoza. She hates the appearance and pretense of fake cohabitation, and she expresses herself with hatred towards it. With the fake umbrella of outward appearance, she says, the happiness and cohabitation sought by everyone do not come. Rightly so, this social aspect, beautifully captured by her pen and critical eye, takes on greater value when we read it on paper.

Here is how she expresses herself in another poem below, with the power of her pen and her art:

TO KISS MEANS TO LOVE

Never regret it, if you give them
On the lips, neck, a postcard forehead.
From a kiss a promise emerges...
Which, when not kept, is a guillotine...

To kiss means to love,
To the point of madness, to the point of frenzy.
To shed tears, every time you say,
I did not know how, so it remained a memory!

I do not know, but for me, having started the path of art in my early youth, the words of the poetry, its weight, the message, the beauty of expression, lift my soul, and as a lover of art in general, and of Moza’s in particular, they make me think and be certain that we are dealing with a pen to which we must devote more time, care, and analysis. The author of the book in question occupies a special place in lyrical-erotic art (and not only), and we must grant her the right to a medal in the poetic marathon of poet artists. I am trying to make an analogy:

Maro, do not walk among the graves,
For you brought the dead back to life,
And you killed the living completely!

This is a pearl of our tradition that comes from popular, artistic-traditional art.

Someone might ask me, what difference is there between this poem and Mimoza’s poetry and her pen?

REVOLUTION OF HEARTS

You lost the fire, the love,
The lava from the blast-furnace lip,
The freedom in the wind of the soul,
The thirst in crystalline tears.

The river brings you logs but once,
Gather them one by one by hand.
The rays like forks for fingers,
To stir the embers in the chest!

Her pen is a magic both in the free flow of thought and in the illumination of the poetic soul through imagery, intertwining the artistic and the traditional. Better than anywhere else, this is seen in the verses of this poem, which expresses power, invention, imagery, and truthfulness. The author Mimoza is simple in her poetic construction; she cooks her art with circumstantial tools, with the waves she has seen and experienced since childhood, with the alleyway where she walked and grew up, with the flower, the tree, the moon, to which she gives different shapes, different forms, expressive power, and mature, concise thought with her fingers.

Mimoza flows from that magical poetic branch of Vlorë, which has at its roots the great Ali Asllani, the magician and tribune of Labëria, and Mimoza can be nothing else but a blossoming branch of this tree. The examples above show this in her lyricism, her striking imagery, her free fantasy, and her artistic flight. I am including a fragment from Ali Asllani:

I WILL SQUEEZE BOTH YOUR EYES

I began and adorned her with what the breast gives and how it gives it,
And with rainbow songs I embroidered her lips and neck,
I embroidered her lips and neck, and settled her right in my heart,
The jealous moon burst as it watched with a scowling eye.

Below is Mimoza with her verse:

THE NEIGHBOR I HAD NEARBY

The neighbor who had me nearby, lips like a marjoram flower,
Teeth white as ivory, champagne in a demijohn.
With her eyes she drew me closer and closer, and it seemed to lightning,
I drank two glasses of mulberry raki, I don't know what I did next, poor me!

I have the right to equilibrium on my pharmaceutical scale of art. If I put them in the balance, it seems to me that the same hand wrote them, in terms of fluency, the tradition of the word in the Lab song, but also in the extension, fluency, and the 16-syllable construction with rhyme, rhythm in the form of a distich, where the word endings are stronger in sound and pronunciation with the resonant vowel, Ë.

Another poet with a majesty of verse is the artist of the coast, Lefter Çipa. Here is how the great master of the beautiful region of Labëria, but also of the entire nation, expresses himself.

“How my heart asks for wine, may my soul turn to wine and blood.
May my song have no end, may life not leave you without a song.”

Do these two poems not look as if they were written by the same talented hand? In fact, these three poetic portraits stem from the same trunk and make up three generations, but at their core, they have the same melody, the same lyricism, the same feeling and expression. All three are part of the life of Labëria over a century. With only one difference: Mimoza is younger and enjoys the right to the baton of the future.

With these words, we are closing the curtain on lyricism in Moza’s book, and we are opening another window, since in her book, besides lyrics, she has social poems, fables, national poems, but also poems about her personal family life. We are making this journey through the entire artistic-geographical body of her poetry to have a fuller accuracy in what we say and express about her poetry. As fragile, sweet, soft-spoken, and advising as Mimoza is, she is just as compassionate and fragile when she writes of her pain. To reflect this, I am including a poem that left an impression on me while reading the book, along with the others:

RESTING ON THE VILLAGE HILL

I tell them well met, I have come, oh, what do my eyes see!?
The tears I have shed since long ago have become like crowns there.

There where they rest in peace, what pain when I see the three of you!?
The dew of the eye a violet, the longing of the soul soot in the clouds.

Resting on the village hill, silently you wait for me in peace,
Wake up at least you, sister, to see a truth.

The author has lost three of her most beloved family members in a short time; her pain is deep. We see and feel this in these verses, which are so touching that without the slightest hesitation I can compare them to the legend of Kostandin. A comparison that Mimoza herself makes below in her verses. Thus, the legend repeats itself, with the same magnificent, touching art and the same power. I think I will write a separate piece on this theme regarding her art, which will have more space, and we will need to go deeper into the pen that writes on the most fragile leaf-like membrane of the soul, for the souls she misses, but who also give her strength and inspire her.

In the cycle of poems about the family, the poem about herself, which the author dedicates to age, also stands out. Here is how she expresses herself:

ONE DAY I WILL GROW OLD

I will grow old one day like everyone else,
I see the white threads in the mirror each day,
I expected them later, they sprouted too soon.
Like snow, born of stress and not nature’s way.

One day I will grow old like everyone else,
Like a boat my thoughts will sail into the past..
When I waited for love like rain on barren land..
Like hail across the verses to write them down..

I will grow old like everyone else one day
In untrodden skies, in the blue beyond
I will dip my pen to revive my soul,
Then leave my soul on paper, like faded suns..

What comment can the reader or critic make on this poem? This poem is as personal as it is social. The author Mimoza does not hide her white hair as we are used to seeing most women do, who seek to remain eternally young in body and appearance. Mimoza the artist, the poet, wants age to turn into verses, into maturity, into advice in art. Commentary on this cycle and this poem is superfluous. The written word is the most beautiful and valuable mirror of her appearance and soul.

Not to dwell any longer on my analyses, I am changing direction; I am jumping to another branch of the poetic genre that Mimoza holds dear, and through which she often relieves her pain and leads the reader to humor. This genre, which Moza cultivates and plows in her own way, planting humor and fable-like beauty there, is a genre cultivated little or not at all by women in Albania. Here reign the heavyweight treasures of the nation such as Dritero Agolli, Dionis Bubani, Ferit Lamaj, Iliaz Bobaj, Pilo Zyba, etc. If we look, they belong to the male gender. But I think times have changed; they are bringing new names to the stage, and among them is Mimoza Osmani.

AND THEY LISTENED TO NO THIRD PARTY...

Two cats got into a fight,
For no reason, over nothing at all,
Over what you are and what I am,
And made a shameful spectacle for all.

One cat was gray,
The other a brownish blonde,
Like sisters they left their tracks,
With soft velvet fur.

They fought over a “piece of meat,
That the fellow threw on purpose..
He wanted to dig a pit for them,
They bared their claws and the idiot laughed.

For a piece of “dried meat,
Tasteless and worthless,
They rush to see who eats it first,
And brawled like bitter rivals.

When they realized it was late,
They shut their doors and ears themselves,
They became sisters as always,
And listened to no third party again.

This is Mimoza the poet, Mimoza the fabulist, Mimoza the painter, Mimoza the creator. This is not her only fable; there are a series of fables created and included in her books. I think they should be collected and published in a separate book, to give the author the beautiful title of fabulist as well, since she cultivates this genre—rarely cultivated by female authors—with great responsibility, quality, and care.

Below I could continue and say much more about the national poems, the social ones or those with a societal sense, but I think that what needed to emerge from this book by the author has achieved its goal. I personally, but I think also those who read these lines, rightfully wish the author a good and successful journey in the beautiful marathon of art.