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168
Journal of Italian Translation
Poet to Poet
Edited by Michael Palma
In this issue we offer translations by two award-winning American
poets. Peter Covino presents several components of a sequence
by the novelist Livia De Stefani, who is only now achieving recognition
as a poet, some years after her death. In the version of a Mario
Luzi poem by the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, we see
the interaction between two strong poetic personalities, where the
translator is as concerned with capturing the essence of the Italian
work and creating a poem in English as he is with rendering the
literal meaning of the original text.
M.P.
Born in Florence in 1914, Mario Luzi published his first book
of poetry, La barca, in 1935, followed by Avvento notturno (1940), Un
brandies (1946), Quaderno gotico (1947), Primizie del deserto (1952),
Onore del vero, (1957, considered by Pasolini one of the best books of
post-war Italy), Il giusto della vita (1960), Nel magma (1963), Dal fondo
delle campagne (1965), and Su fondamenti invisibili (1971). In 1985, at
the age of seventy-one, Luzi published Per il battesimo dei nostri
frammenti, the crowning achievement of an extraordinary poetic
adventure. In 1990 he published Frasi e incisi per un canto salutare, a
book which is if anything even richer and more complex than the
previous one, and which constitutes a new fundamental chapter of
one of the great poetic experiences of our time. Viaggio terrestre e
celeste di Simone Martini (Garzanti) was published in 1994, when Luzi
was eighty. In consonance with the persistent interrogation of reality
and nature in the last three volumes, with Sotto specie umana
(Garzanti, 1999) he has written a modern De rerum natura, which
shows a new and surprising vitality. Luzi died in 2005.
Dana Gioia is the author of three volumes of poetry (Daily
Horoscope, 1986; The Gods of Winter, 1991; Interrogations at Noon, 2001,
winner of the American Book Award), three collections of essays
(Can Poetry Matter?, 1992; Barrier of a Common Language, 2003; Disappearing
Ink, 2004), and an opera libretto (Nosferatu, 2001). He has
translated Montale’s Mottetti (1990) and Seneca’s Hercules Furens
(1995), and has co-edited a number of anthologies of Italian and
American poetry. Since February 2003, he has been the Chairman