Giuseppe Ungaretti Book order

Geoffrey Brock, whose translations have won him Poetry magazine's John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, finally does justice to these slim, concentrated verses in his English translation, alongside Ungaretti's Italian originals. Famed for his brevity, Giuseppe Ungaretti's early poems swing nimbly from the coarse matter of tram wires, alleyways, quails in bushes, and hotel landladies to the mystic shiver of pure abstraction. These are the kinds of poems that, through their numinous clarity and shifting intimations, can make a poetry-lover of the most stone-faced non-believer. Ungaretti won multiple prizes for his poetry, including the 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He was a major proponent of the Hermetic style, which proposed a poetry in which the sounds of words were of equal import to their meanings. This auditory awareness echoes through Brock's hair-raising translations, where a man holding vigil with his dead, open-mouthed comrade, says, "I have never felt / so fastened / to life."

Giuseppe Ungaretti was born in Alexandria in 1888. In 1912 he left Egypt to study in Paris where he was influenced by the French avant garde. Moving to Milan in 1914, he became a central figure of Italian modernism. This is a selection of his poems. schovat popis

The biography offers a poetic exploration of the spirit of early 20th-century Italy and Europe, capturing the essence of the era through Ungaretti's work. For the first time, it presents a complete translation of the poet's verses, allowing readers to appreciate his profound impact and the emotional depth of his poetry.