A Selection of Modern Italian Poetry in Translation

Book excerpt: What was Italian poetry like in the years of extraordinary historical, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual change between the 1860s and the Unification of Italy in the 1960s? In A Selection of Modern Italian Poetry in Translation Roberta Payne provides a bilingual collection of ninety-two poems by thirty-five Italian poets, including works of classicism and passionate decadentism, examples of crepuscularism, and poetry by Ungaretti, Montale, and Quasimodo. Payne pays particular attention to poets of the fifties and sixties, futurists, and female poets. She notes that the futurists, who have rarely been translated, were particularly important as they were truly original, attempting to develop new notions of word, line, sound, and phrase. Such new notions make translating them particularly challenging. She also offers a large sampling from poets of the fifties and sixties, many of whom have won the Viareggio Prize. Poems by women in this volume reflect diverse schools and directions while maintaining a distinctly female voice. Containing the original Italian and the translation side-by-side, this volume offers a wonderful introduction to Italian poetry to scholars and general readers alike.