What do you think?
Rate this book
Within the Sweet Noise of Life: Selected Poems
Widely considered to be among the most important Italian poets of the twentieth century, Sandro Penna was born and raised in Perugia but spent most of his life in Rome. Openly gay, Penna wrote verses celebrating homosexual love with lyrical elegance. His writing alternates between whimsy and melancholia, but it is always full of light.
Juggling traditional Italian prosody and subject matter with their gritty urban opposites in taut, highly concentrated poems, Penna’s lyrics revel in love and the eruption of Eros together with the extraordinary that can be found within simple everyday life. There is something ancient in Penna’s poetry, and something Etruscan or Greek about the poems, though the landscape is most often of sensual yet severe, sinuous yet solid, inscrutable, intangible, and languorous, with a Sphinx-like and sun-soaked smile. Penna’s city is eternal—a mythically decadent Rome that brings to mind Paris or Alexandria. And though the echoes resound—from Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Baudelaire to Leopardi, D’Annunzio, and Cavafy—the voice is always undeniably and wonderfully Penna’s own.
Juggling traditional Italian prosody and subject matter with their gritty urban opposites in taut, highly concentrated poems, Penna’s lyrics revel in love and the eruption of Eros together with the extraordinary that can be found within simple everyday life. There is something ancient in Penna’s poetry, and something Etruscan or Greek about the poems, though the landscape is most often of sensual yet severe, sinuous yet solid, inscrutable, intangible, and languorous, with a Sphinx-like and sun-soaked smile. Penna’s city is eternal—a mythically decadent Rome that brings to mind Paris or Alexandria. And though the echoes resound—from Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Baudelaire to Leopardi, D’Annunzio, and Cavafy—the voice is always undeniably and wonderfully Penna’s own.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Hardcover
Published March 15, 2021
41 people want to read
About the author
Sandro Penna
38 books15 followersSandro Penna (June 12, 1906 – January 21, 1977) was an Italian poet.
Born in Perugia, Penna lived in Rome for most of his life. He never had a regular job, contributing to several newspapers and writing almost only poetry. His first poems were published in 1932, through the intervention of Umberto Saba. Openly gay, his works were largely marked by his melanchonic view of homosexuality as emargination. Penna's economic conditions were often poor, and in his late years a group of intellectuals signed a manifesto in the newspaper 'Paese Sera' to help him.
His affection for young boys was reflected by the constant presence of young boys in his verses, as well as in his taking a 14-year-old streetboy from Rome, Raffaele, to the home he shared with his mother in 1956 and living with him, on and off, for fourteen years.
According to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Penna's poetry was made of "an extremely delicate material of city places, with asphalt and grass, whitewashed walls of poor houses, white marbles of the bridges, and everywhere the sea's breath, the murmur of the river in which the trembling night lights reflect".
His controversial erotic love poems can be found in English translation in This Strange Joy (Ohio State University Press, 1982) and Remember me, God of Love (Carcanet, 1993).
Sandro Penna died in Rome in 1977.
Born in Perugia, Penna lived in Rome for most of his life. He never had a regular job, contributing to several newspapers and writing almost only poetry. His first poems were published in 1932, through the intervention of Umberto Saba. Openly gay, his works were largely marked by his melanchonic view of homosexuality as emargination. Penna's economic conditions were often poor, and in his late years a group of intellectuals signed a manifesto in the newspaper 'Paese Sera' to help him.
His affection for young boys was reflected by the constant presence of young boys in his verses, as well as in his taking a 14-year-old streetboy from Rome, Raffaele, to the home he shared with his mother in 1956 and living with him, on and off, for fourteen years.
According to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Penna's poetry was made of "an extremely delicate material of city places, with asphalt and grass, whitewashed walls of poor houses, white marbles of the bridges, and everywhere the sea's breath, the murmur of the river in which the trembling night lights reflect".
His controversial erotic love poems can be found in English translation in This Strange Joy (Ohio State University Press, 1982) and Remember me, God of Love (Carcanet, 1993).
Sandro Penna died in Rome in 1977.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 12, 2022
‘Then let me go if dawn’s already here’
And so I found myself alone again
Among the empty and endless cabins by the sea
Among the mute and anonymous booths
Was I trying to find a home as well?
Hadn’t the sea, the clear sea turned me away
With its light? Was only unhappiness left?
Dawn, tired, brought me back to a road
And so I found myself alone again
Among the empty and endless cabins by the sea
Among the mute and anonymous booths
Was I trying to find a home as well?
Hadn’t the sea, the clear sea turned me away
With its light? Was only unhappiness left?
Dawn, tired, brought me back to a road
July 2, 2022
"The frolic towards twilight I go
In the opposite direction of the crowd
Happily and quickly leaving the stadium
I look at no one and look at all
Now and then collect a smile
Rarer still a cheerful hello
And I no longer remember who I am
I'm sorry then to have to die
Dying seems too unfair
Even if I don't remember who I am"
I bought this last year during the Seagull Winter Sale; I was intrigued by the idea of an openly queer 20th-century Italian poet. It's unfortunate that it did not end up being what I was expecting at all and I was ultimately very disappointed. The above-quoted poem is the longest in the selection and most of them are just a stanza of 4 or 5, even 2, lines—ephemeral not only due to their brevity but also because of the fleeting nature of images and experiences they attempt to capture.
I will not deny that there are some quite striking displays of poetic vision here, transmitted in a language that doesn't rely on excess to indicate fullness. Furthermore, Penna comes praised by stalwarts like Natalia Ginzburg and Pier Paolo Pasolini so there is of course a lot of dexterity at display here. It was just not the kind of queer poetry I was expecting. In fact, apart from the scant subtext, I really could not pick up his so-called "celebration of homosexual love".
In the opposite direction of the crowd
Happily and quickly leaving the stadium
I look at no one and look at all
Now and then collect a smile
Rarer still a cheerful hello
And I no longer remember who I am
I'm sorry then to have to die
Dying seems too unfair
Even if I don't remember who I am"
I bought this last year during the Seagull Winter Sale; I was intrigued by the idea of an openly queer 20th-century Italian poet. It's unfortunate that it did not end up being what I was expecting at all and I was ultimately very disappointed. The above-quoted poem is the longest in the selection and most of them are just a stanza of 4 or 5, even 2, lines—ephemeral not only due to their brevity but also because of the fleeting nature of images and experiences they attempt to capture.
I will not deny that there are some quite striking displays of poetic vision here, transmitted in a language that doesn't rely on excess to indicate fullness. Furthermore, Penna comes praised by stalwarts like Natalia Ginzburg and Pier Paolo Pasolini so there is of course a lot of dexterity at display here. It was just not the kind of queer poetry I was expecting. In fact, apart from the scant subtext, I really could not pick up his so-called "celebration of homosexual love".
December 21, 2024
"Furnished room in the 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘰
Church bell there at the foot of the bed
Is love not a tight knot
Between angst and exultation?"
These spare, brief poems read as the ragged and ornate hems of desire, and with a single line, so often, I paused and let the summery longing take my breath away, feed it back into my lungs.
Church bell there at the foot of the bed
Is love not a tight knot
Between angst and exultation?"
These spare, brief poems read as the ragged and ornate hems of desire, and with a single line, so often, I paused and let the summery longing take my breath away, feed it back into my lungs.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews