What Sex Is Death?

by Dario Bellezza, Peter Covino (translator)

“Dario Bellezza—mentored by Morante and championed by Pasolini, who called him ‘the best poet of the new generation’—remains one of the essential Italian voices of the latter half of the twentieth century. As an out gay man, he wrote transgressive poems of love and sex and polemic (by turns tender, brash, angry, defiant) as the gay-rights struggles of the sixties and seventies morphed into the AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties. Thanks to poet-translator Peter Covino’s scrupulous yet daring versions, which are labors both of love and skill, American readers can now trace the arc of Bellezza’s career, from his earlyi Invective and License to his final Proclamation on Glamour—each an aching, disruptive testament to ‘this infected world.’”
—Geoffrey Brock

Dario Bellezza—Italy’s first openly gay, major prizewinning poet-novelist-playwright—was a bold, daring writer who energetically explored love, sexual transformation, and death. Bellezza embraced a variety of forms, from unabashed love-lyric to political narrative, and the fervor of his voice makes a compelling argument for his lasting importance as one of the most remarkable poets of the late twentieth century. Yet, until now, his work has never been available in English. Award-winning translator Peter Covino offers a wide-ranging selection of representative poetry from Bellezza’s career. Influenced by Rimbaud, the Beats, and the growing European gay rights movements, his poetry remains innovative and timely. Ranging from stray cats in the graveyards of Rome, to the literal and metaphoric fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, to the joys and disappointments of random hookups, Bellezza’s dazzling visions will sparkle in readers’ eyes like sunspots long after they complete this magnificent volume.

Genres: Poetry

232 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2025

About the author

Dario Bellezza was promoted by Pier Paolo Pasolini, who said, after the publication of his first book of poetry Invettive e licenze (1971), that Bellezza was «the best poet of the new generation». The previous year he released the novel l'Innocenza (1970) with a foreword by Alberto Moravia, a dark and tormented story with autobiographical elements. Also the following novels Lettere da Sodoma (1972) and Il carnefice (1973), are based on Bellezza's life.
His poetry contains autobiographical elements, as his homosexuality (which he lived in a maudit way with male prostitutes and drug addicts), his main influences were the italian poet Sandro Penna, but also Jean Genet and the symbolist Arthur Rimbaud, whom Bellezza traslated in italian the entire poetical work.
He died poor and alone by AIDS complications in Rome in 1996.

Reviews

[Isla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a short extract of Dario's poem 'The Young Fathers' in an essay and had to find more. The first lines "I, nocturnal hero, nightly/ beamed if I came across some young father!" look impossibly brilliant also in the original Italian ("io, eroe notturno, notturnamente ero...") which the text helpfully provides. I thoroughly enjoyed reading that and more of Bellezza's work.