Be a Firefly in the Darkness

Esposito Romano, born in the province of Pavia on 15 March 1999, is an Italian poet and essayist, a scholar of Philosophy and Contemporary Poetry. At the age of seventeen, he began writing his first volume of Sii una lucciola nelle tenebre: Il valzer dell'anima sola. The rapid spraying of the Italian and foreign Beat generation, D'Annunzio's lexical research and the reflections of the Spanish Generation of '98 abruptly affected the maturation of the author, at first an author of long stories marked by dirty realism. He recognises Gianni Milano, Marco Guzzi and Edgar Allan Poe as his spiritual masters. His first production echoes existential, anthropological and social themes; his second production, marked by his stay in Pavia during the period of his university studies, reveals Lorchian preferences, from the marginalisation of the gypsies to an intense criticism of the conditions of exploitation of young workers. On 21 October 2019, he self-published all the books he had written in the years leading up to his nineteenth birthday, achieving a bestseller with A Happy Ending in the categories Black Humour and Contemporary Literature. In January of the same year, he founded the New Youth Literary Movement, inspired by the party of the same name he mentioned in Almost Eternal. The literary movement fought for a sexual, cultural and anti-folkloristic emancipation of Italian poetry. Esposito's production appears to be constantly changing, thus reflecting an attempt to insinuate hyperbolic doubt in the reader, who will have to experience the multiple ideologies exemplified by the protagonists and narrating voices of his productions. Thus, Esposito's poetics emerges as a critique of ideology.An avid reader of French Romanticism, Rimbaud's poetic prose, coupled with his mystical themes, led Esposito to reject rhymed verse, thus likening his style to post-modern minimalism. Erri De Luca and Charles Bukowski are recognised by Esposito as leading exponents of international poetry.