Even the sidewalks get in the way: "A minimal manual for those who stumble upon reality" (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798189105845)

A minimal manual for those who have stopped looking for easy roads and have chosen to inhabit the cracks of reality.

There is an invisible geography governing our days, made of tiny and annoying details: a sidewalk that is too high, a car parked over the crosswalk, a wheelchair forced to invent the space the city denies it. And then there are the other obstacles - the ones that make no sound, yet cut across our path all the same: a memory returning by betrayal, a love squeezing like an ill-fitting suit, a promise left half-finished on the floor.

In this intense new collection of poetry, Marco Capitani performs a rare and necessary operation: he looks at reality not from the top of a control tower, but down at the level of the asphalt, right where shoes wear thin and patience frays. It is poetry that tastes of dust and salt, stretching from narrow alleys to the shores of the Mediterranean, in a continuous movement between the sea that dismantles calculations and the mainland that holds its breath.

Even sidewalks clutter does not promise clean pathways. On the contrary, it slams into our faces the uncomfortable truth of a distracted time that has turned the journey into a parking lot for the ego. Yet, right inside this landscape of stumbles, a luminous and subversive discovery makes its way forward: the obstacle is not merely misfortune to be cursed, but the precise moment when routine breaks, forcing us to look at where we are placing our feet and, above all, who we are when everything else collapses.

A collection of civil and sentimental resistance, enriched by a profound human and literary journey uniting the stages and cultural awards experienced by the author between his roots in Umbria and the shores of the world.

The Author: Marco Capitani, originally from Umbria, lives and writes between Italy and Tunisia. A jury member for historical Italian literary awards since 2008, he is the author of significant poetry collections and monographs. With an ironic, disenchanted, and deeply human gaze, his works explore the geographies of absence, memory, and the minute art of freedom.

Author: Marco Capitani
ISBN-13: 9798189105845
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 07/26/2026
Pages: 112
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.24lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.28d