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Last Stops of the Night Journey
Glimmering meditations on time, memory, imprisonment, human connection, life and death by the preeminent Italian language poet, Milo De Angelis
An arrow hits a grape and carries it through the air, a hand untangles a knot, a voice emerges from a stone to speak about life. In his poems, Milo De Angelis attends to the experience of confinement. Since 1996, he has taught poetry in a high-security prison on the outskirts of Milan. He sees poetry as a daily salvation; when the knot comes undone, it “carries back the sweet human voice of bodies in motion.” And when the stone cracks open, a voice tells of you and of me, a shared story. De Angelis never shies from the deep fears, darkness, and indeterminacy of incarceration. The characters of these poems wonder whether they will survive. They know all that stays hidden in an end, and they plan for their salvation. Milo De Angelis's language is ancient and new, transcendent, and urgent. Last Stops of the Night Journey pulses with the immensity of silence, memory, life, time, and fear. De Angelis insists that the infinite language of poetry can speak to the incarcerated person, greet them, know them, and chart a world beyond physical walls.
An arrow hits a grape and carries it through the air, a hand untangles a knot, a voice emerges from a stone to speak about life. In his poems, Milo De Angelis attends to the experience of confinement. Since 1996, he has taught poetry in a high-security prison on the outskirts of Milan. He sees poetry as a daily salvation; when the knot comes undone, it “carries back the sweet human voice of bodies in motion.” And when the stone cracks open, a voice tells of you and of me, a shared story. De Angelis never shies from the deep fears, darkness, and indeterminacy of incarceration. The characters of these poems wonder whether they will survive. They know all that stays hidden in an end, and they plan for their salvation. Milo De Angelis's language is ancient and new, transcendent, and urgent. Last Stops of the Night Journey pulses with the immensity of silence, memory, life, time, and fear. De Angelis insists that the infinite language of poetry can speak to the incarcerated person, greet them, know them, and chart a world beyond physical walls.
- GenresPoetry
320 pages, Paperback
Published April 14, 2026
About the author
Milo De Angelis
55 books15 followersMilo De Angelis was born in Milan where he currently lives and works.
De Angelis made his debut at the very young age of 25 with the collection Somiglianze (Resemblances), which was destined to mark a turning point in contemporary Italian poetry because it hovered between philosophical argument inspired by Heideggerian existentialism and intimate, almost confessional, reflection. For this reason numerous critics have spoken of neo-hermetism, although this label seems to be rather restrictive and doesn’t take into account the enormous complexity of themes and of De Angelis’ rhetorical poetics.
De Angelis' very particular style is based on two things, the first being a masterly alternation of different linguistic registers (high, colloquial, philosophical, technical, in which a first person narrative is interspliced with fragments of dialogue). The second is the predominance of metonym over metaphor so as to create a perennial sliding of the image of reference. This style becomes even more obsure and cryptically withdrawn in Millimetri (1983). In his successive collections, Terra del viso (1985), Distante un padre (1989) and Biografia sommaria (1999), De Angelis seems to want to return to the exploration of the reservoir of a memory that is only partially biographical (he refers especially to the father figure). Among the recurring themes in his poetry one finds illness, the metropolitan Milanese ambience, and sport seen not only as physical activity (in his youth De Angelis was quite the athlete) but as a key towards understanding his own and other people’s existence. Ultimately, his vision of reality oscillates between an almost ‘biological’ materialism and an impulse towards human redemption despite its impracticability and obsolescence.
In the course of his career, De Angelis also published a narrative text halfway between fable and short story (La corsa dei mantelli, 1979) and a collection of essays and reflections (Poesia e destino, 1982), in addition to dedicating himself from 1977-1979 to founding and editing the magazine Il Niebo. He has translated works from Latin and French: Baudelaire, Blanchot, Lucretius, and Virgil, amongst others,. He himself has been translated into English and French.
The poems presented here are from his latest collection of poetry, Tema dell’addio (Farewell Theme, 2005), one of the highest points of his poetic production. The premature death of his wife constitutes the point of departure for this difficult “lyrical biography” in which it is possible to trace decisive stages of her terrible sickness through a collective and cumulative rather than a single reading of the poems in the collection. He provides an almost backwards reconstruction of the events. The elegiac tone often gives way to the evocative, meditative and reflexive one typical of his previous production, creating a bond and a strong formal (and thematic) consistency between the poetics of the past and those of the present.
© Roberto Baronti Marchiò and Saverio Tomaiuolo (Translated by Berenice Cocciolillo)
De Angelis made his debut at the very young age of 25 with the collection Somiglianze (Resemblances), which was destined to mark a turning point in contemporary Italian poetry because it hovered between philosophical argument inspired by Heideggerian existentialism and intimate, almost confessional, reflection. For this reason numerous critics have spoken of neo-hermetism, although this label seems to be rather restrictive and doesn’t take into account the enormous complexity of themes and of De Angelis’ rhetorical poetics.
De Angelis' very particular style is based on two things, the first being a masterly alternation of different linguistic registers (high, colloquial, philosophical, technical, in which a first person narrative is interspliced with fragments of dialogue). The second is the predominance of metonym over metaphor so as to create a perennial sliding of the image of reference. This style becomes even more obsure and cryptically withdrawn in Millimetri (1983). In his successive collections, Terra del viso (1985), Distante un padre (1989) and Biografia sommaria (1999), De Angelis seems to want to return to the exploration of the reservoir of a memory that is only partially biographical (he refers especially to the father figure). Among the recurring themes in his poetry one finds illness, the metropolitan Milanese ambience, and sport seen not only as physical activity (in his youth De Angelis was quite the athlete) but as a key towards understanding his own and other people’s existence. Ultimately, his vision of reality oscillates between an almost ‘biological’ materialism and an impulse towards human redemption despite its impracticability and obsolescence.
In the course of his career, De Angelis also published a narrative text halfway between fable and short story (La corsa dei mantelli, 1979) and a collection of essays and reflections (Poesia e destino, 1982), in addition to dedicating himself from 1977-1979 to founding and editing the magazine Il Niebo. He has translated works from Latin and French: Baudelaire, Blanchot, Lucretius, and Virgil, amongst others,. He himself has been translated into English and French.
The poems presented here are from his latest collection of poetry, Tema dell’addio (Farewell Theme, 2005), one of the highest points of his poetic production. The premature death of his wife constitutes the point of departure for this difficult “lyrical biography” in which it is possible to trace decisive stages of her terrible sickness through a collective and cumulative rather than a single reading of the poems in the collection. He provides an almost backwards reconstruction of the events. The elegiac tone often gives way to the evocative, meditative and reflexive one typical of his previous production, creating a bond and a strong formal (and thematic) consistency between the poetics of the past and those of the present.
© Roberto Baronti Marchiò and Saverio Tomaiuolo (Translated by Berenice Cocciolillo)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 23, 2026
I had become by now the incarnation
of what we lose
*
nothing belongs to us except this page
crowded with demons.
*
[...] his thirsty soul wanders
in the courtyard aimlessly and even the dahlias
hold their breath as time
separates us little by little.
of what we lose
*
nothing belongs to us except this page
crowded with demons.
*
[...] his thirsty soul wanders
in the courtyard aimlessly and even the dahlias
hold their breath as time
separates us little by little.
May 12, 2026
3.5.
*How enormous
is the school of the exile and the return
of every love.*
*you asked for an art more serene than you are,
a tender human bargain*
Not reaching for so much; reaching for nothing. A word shall arrive formless from the violet evening. Death shall arrive, formless, and it is only a moment, eternal moment.
Pleas for the singular, for pure surface, clean face. The obvious, the immortal, the true. Fragile light, silent haunt — poems of the dead and breathless.
*Nobody, death, knows you more than I do
nobody searched for you throughout the body
nobody started so early
to face you…*
*How enormous
is the school of the exile and the return
of every love.*
*you asked for an art more serene than you are,
a tender human bargain*
Not reaching for so much; reaching for nothing. A word shall arrive formless from the violet evening. Death shall arrive, formless, and it is only a moment, eternal moment.
Pleas for the singular, for pure surface, clean face. The obvious, the immortal, the true. Fragile light, silent haunt — poems of the dead and breathless.
*Nobody, death, knows you more than I do
nobody searched for you throughout the body
nobody started so early
to face you…*
June 20, 2026
Even in a system of incarceration built to break down one’s humanity, the language of poetry perseveres
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews