Formative life events are related thematically and non-sequentially. Of his early piano lessons (late in the book) Tedeschi says, “I understood / that the piece was alive, and I was hurting it” (96). The “Maestro” teacher of his teens is portrayed as harsh and unreachable: “I’d seen God’s face. But at the last moment, He / turned his back on me” (60-61). Tedeschi credits childhood experiences with imparting his rigorous self-discipline and artistic motivation:
To be empty was to be impoverished and thus, trash. […] I am a kid who has to say something more than once, not only to be heard but to be real. I have to capture this moment before it seals up, before it is gone forever. (87)
Fugitive’s emphasis on family memoir is poignant testimony to the lingering vestiges of multigenerational trauma and displacement. Tedeschi speaks of “Trauma as water—a body is as malleable as any / landscape. / […] / Trauma as ghost” (72). Via colourful sketches of family members and by blurring real and surreal borders, he discloses his inherited history with balanced authenticity and love. He notes that the act of naming can be divisive: “In Biblical times, names were little poems, / powerful enough to draw borders / […] / in the air” (70). His maternal ancestors were Jews who migrated from Poland to Australia, his paternal ancestors Jews who fled Italy in the time of Mussolini:
My great-grandfather was sent immediately to an internment camp for enemy aliens. My great-grandmother was committed to a mental institution. To my young grandfather she said—our lives are finished. (29)
Tedeschi examines his struggle to free himself from the powerful influence of his “formidable” maternal grandmother (Zaslavsky 11:01). When she died, he says, “I could / smell her in the walls, all spit and spite” (82). This matriarch features in the book as a bearer of stories, but also of family hardship and pain:
Nanna did make a joke, just one time. My sister, then a baby, dropped a bunch of dolls on the floor. Nanna walked in and simply said—Auschwitz. Everyone cried. (55)
Tedeschi often mentions a god but does not appear religious. Instead, striving for the creation or performance of transcendent, “sublime” works takes on a spiritual significance (Zaslavsky 12:21). He conveys religious ambivalence in typically pithy statements such as “God’s face was not meant to / be seen”, and “if there is a God, / he took a huge risk, making us able to love each / other so fully” (75; 59). When relating the religious rituals of his upbringing, he highlights fear and superstition:
In the Haggadah, it is written that we must open the front door to Elijah so he can drink our wine. A swill of wind from the hallway—we all laugh, look into each other’s eyes, pretend not to be afraid. (52)
Music enthusiasts will enjoy Tedeschi’s phenomenal, technically instructive descriptions of performing, for example:
The finger must be firm as fire, the body braced, the ear alive. There can be no hesitation—the thought is made impulse, the candle of sound is fixed in the air, the desire is crazed. Everyone has stopped breathing. Ears hang as scaffolding. The world stops spinning. People across the planet cease to move. That things continue as they are is unthinkable. (78-79)
Poetry enthusiasts will appreciate Tedeschi’s experimental web of narrative threads, acute analysis of creativity, and delicately linked metaphors. Tedeschi explores his need to perform with candour and wit, declaring for example on page 57, “I’m primed to pain like the / tiny tessellations of a note—please look at me”. His thematic connections emerge in impulsive sweeps and unexpected parallels that resemble a pianist’s brilliant whims, as he grapples with the quest for musical, poetic, and personal expression.
Fugitive is left open-ended:
In Russia, it’s said that music cannot be trusted, the score alone can never tell the full story, the real meaning lies beneath. But I just don’t know. If I were to play everything, only everything, then that might just be enough. (99)
A century ago, Charles Reznikoff interpreted testimony as radically anti-poetic (“PennSound: Charles Reznikoff”). And to Ecstasy and Fugitive both demonstrate testimonial poetics in that they catalogue real experiences, impressions, and events, but they add fresh lyricism and structural innovation to the tradition. Both books testify to experiences of emplacement and displacement, and attempt to map liminal territories. Both are contributions to contemporary multicultural Australian poetry, and both are testimony to Upswell’s mission to make “books to last: books with the potential to still be noticed, and noted, after decades and thus be ripe to influence new literary histories” (end pages, both books).
