Poetry is a complex and emotional language. It's a form of art that is meant to reach out and to connect to others. “The Rubiks In/Cube,” a collection of poems by Vincenzo Lauria, does just that. Lauria held an event at the Palazzi Community Center in Florence on July 7 to read aloud a handful of his poems and to invite others to read them as well.

Before the reading began, it was already clearly evident how his art connects and brings people together. There were family and friends of his in attendance, and others who he warmly welcomed into this safe space. Between the readings, there was a young man who played the guitar, with every other reading from Lauria  conducted by friends and fans of his.

When asked about why he wanted to have his poetry read aloud he shared that, “even if the poet isn't able to read well, so to speak, like a performer, like an actor, there's something that vibrates differently in his voice, which is the truth of poetry.”

Lauria, gave a riveting performance when he stepped up to read his work. He was expressive, he held his hands clasped and released them when hitting the right beats from his writing. He read the poem as if these thoughts and emotions were characters playing out in real time in front of the audience. 

What makes people gravitate to these poems is through the inspiration of the collection. The In/Cube part of the title and it being tied to the Rubik's cube has multiple meanings. Lauria is drawn to the Rubik's cube because of its complex structure and how to him it represents the microcosm and macrocosm. The pieces in here are otherworldly while still following the evolving structure of the cube.

In explaining the structure of the collection in tandem with the cube, Lauria said that,   “there's a connection between each poem and the next, between each section and the next section.” 

 To explain how he laid out his book Lauria shared, “ I chose to make the six faces of the cube correspond to a word. There are six words and each word is repeated nine times like the squares on each face of the cube.”

This formal structure helps him to format his writing and create a book that has individual poems remain connected throughout the collection. In addition to the cube being tied to the structure, it also shaped how Lauria found the emotion in the piece. L'in/cubo the original Italian title means inside the cube and nightmares. This is the otherworldly aspect Lauria captures in his poems. 

This feeling of the cosmos and the vast entity of the universe was captured in the first poem Lauria read aloud, “The world falls into its own land, it grafts itself into the cosmic gear.”

It’s lines like these that make Lauria's work feel like poetry - even though he doesn’t fully claim the title himself. 

“There's no poet's stamp, but everything begins with writing, so poetry also comes from poiein, which means to do,” he said.

Lauria simply began writing, and believes you don’t decide to be a poet or not because no one can tell you if you are one or not. It's this loose defining quality that has seeped into the pages of his book. 

Vincenzo Lauria took such enjoyment in hearing others read his work aloud at the Palazzi Community Center. He sat off to the side at the event, a look of pride and love in his eyes when someone stood up to read. He was even able to perform a duet, reading a piece alongside a friend in a comedic back and forth.

It was clear that there was love for his work and the connection of people in the community center that night. He even shared to me, “there's a poem I read tonight. One of the only love poems there is, that was inspired, an impossible love, like the difficulty of putting it back together.”

This connection is what brought people to the community center that night, and by the time Lauria finished reading, it was clear the garden had felt every piece of it.