Fabrizio Frosini

Summer Arias Fabrizio Frosini

"Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu..." 'Summer is a coming in, loudly sing cuckoo.' This is possibly the oldest round song in English and I thought it appropriate to introduce this volume of verse. Summer means many different things around the World: I would say that Spring is the lamb but Summer can be the tiger. One of poem describes the tropical storms which afflict her native city of Lagos in Nigeria, in which she compares the tension arising from flood waters to the stretching surface of a helium filled balloon. The sheer joy of Summer is often in these poems a recall of childhood memories... Others remember the intensity of a starry sky on clear nights and the bright flickering of the fireflies in the bushes... or the warm air, cool lemonade and ripe strawberries (much to my taste, I might add, particularly the strawberries which, in my opinion, should be consumed with mountains of Ice-cream) ... From my own perspective the garden is just putting on its Summer coat of many colours.. the purple Clematis, the red roses, the whites of the elder and bramble blossoms, the yellow flag irises, giving a gradual feeling of warmth. So I see Summer as the Season of movement -in musical terms the Allegro to the Spring's adagio- and this feeling is expressed in the many excellent poems in this volume. Therefore I invite you, the reader, to share these experiences. [T. Billsborough]