Author Description

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Ned Condini. One of the great poets of modern Italy, Giorgio Caproni wrote with aristocratic elegance, intellectual coolness and rythmic complexity. Yet his poems, so clear and easy to read, strike deep in the heart with a force that is rarely equalled: "O my family, my / family scattered like the Jews... my torn tent blown away / with its fire and its god." Ned Condini deftly translates these poems, at turns elegiac, ironic, metaphysical, despairing, with terse free verse. The bilingual edition, based on the revised collection of the poet's life work, permits the reader to check the original and catch the supple changing rhythms.