The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology

by Geoffrey Brock (Editor)

The first comprehensive anthology of modern Italian poetry, in a beautiful bilingual edition More than a century has passed since F. T. Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto" slammed the door on the nineteenth century and trumpeted the arrival of modernity. Since then, against the backdrop of two world wars and many social upheavals, Italian poets have explored the possibilities of verse in a modern age, creating one of the great bodies of twentieth-century poetry.
Even before Marinetti, poets such as Giovanni Pascoli had begun to clear the weedy rhetoric and withered diction from the once-glorious but by then decadent grounds of Italian poetry. And their winter labors led to an extraordinary Giuseppe Ungaretti's wartime distillations and Eugenio Montale's "astringent music"; Umberto Saba's song of himself and Salvatore Quasimodo's hermetic involutions. After World War II, new generations―including such marvelously diverse poets as Sandro Penna, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Amelia Rosselli, Vittorio Sereni, and Raffaello Baldini―extended the promise of the prewar era into our time.
Surprising and illuminating, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry invites the reader to examine the works of these and other poets―seventy-three in all―in conversation with one another. Edited by the poet and translator Geoffrey Brock, these poems have been rendered into English by some of our finest English-language poets, including Charles Wright, Paul Muldoon, and many exciting younger voices.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Italian Literature, Italy

720 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2012

Reviews

[Anne Earney · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this book over a year ago, I was actively trying to learn Italian in anticipation of a trip, so I was trying to read both the Italian and the translations. Then the trip was postponed, then canceled, and I switched to mostly reading just the translations.

The book contains a wide range of poets, with many different styles, and some were definitely more to my liking than others (Saba, Gatto, Pavese, Bertolucci, Guidici, Baldini), but I enjoyed reading them all. If I get back to studying Italian, I'll probably focus on the poets I most enjoyed.

I didn't count, but it seems like female poets may have been under-represented.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a mammoth and delicious slice of Italian poetry pizza. Yes, yes, the imagery is unsubtle and I'd be better served by revolting academic hyperbole, but the pizza call-out is my boot in the ass of crappy, turdy literary euphemism. The boot (Italy is shaped like a boot, people) always comes away a kind of pus-like yellow. Like watery cheese.
Anyway, enough about me. This is a tremendous, deep-dish dig into the very stuff of the title, and it is warmly representative. I love anthologies like this because you get to savor the melted state of familiar cheeses (cheese=poets) and some newer, even finer cheeses that you never knew lurked just beneath the surface of the--(maybe calzone is better).
Calzone IS better. A great book!

[Stefania · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book... it encompasses the major poets of Italian Literature from Pascoli to Pusterla, with wonderful English translations from several among the best poet/translators who have translated Italian poets... Brock is a great translator himself, and so is Galassi, and so is Stewart or Scappettone... a wonderful journey into the landscape of modern and contemporary Italian poetry.

[Lauren Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Given the nature of mountains and the slipperiness of our instruments, I suspect two tunnels are in truth the best we can hope for. But wouldn't you rather have two? " (XLIII)

I would like to thank Farrar Straus Giroux for providing me with a copy of this book!

This book is filled with historical Italian poetry, with both translation english and Italian. It provided a brief history lesson in the beginning, followed by many amazing poetry! It was so beautifully translated!

This book was a long read, as it took me about a week to read.

I would recommend it to anyone into poetry!

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://5cense.com/25/1258.html

[Alex Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ma che bellezza ! Questa collezione di poesia é meravigliosa. Quanti poeti. L'Italia stessa indugia in queste pagine, e il suo profumo sale in ogni strofa.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book on a resort shelf at the bookstore. Except for Montale & Campana, I had not read any Italian poetry and was pleasantly surprised by more than a few poets here. Brock does much of the translating here but does use quite a few translations by others which I liked as it changes things up. The fun part for me was attempting to read various lines out loud in Italian which I could do surprisingly often. I was especially impressed with some of the female poets who I hadn't heard of before such as Amelia Rosselli. My only complaint is that I felt there was a fair amount of filler here.

[World Literature Today]

"Geoffrey Brock resourcefully resolves the challenge in part by doing his own translations of a significant number of poems, a job for which he meets the criteria set in his translator’s note—“translators must also be poets”—by being himself an accomplished translator and poet." - Rita Signorelli-Pappas, Princeton, New Jersey

This book was reviewed in the September/October 2012 issue of World Literature Today. The full review can be read at the WLT website: http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/2...

[Tom]

Great review in The Nation, which puts this book in larger context of art of translation. If you can't afford the book (at $50, I'm afraid it exceeds my meager book budget), you can still learn a lot from the review.

http://www.thenation.com/article/1673...

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed these poems :)