Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by by Gayle Ridinger. Introduction by Simone Giusti. Camillo Sbarbaro (1888-1967) experimented for fifty years with a form of prose poetry that he called trucioli--"shavings." Some of the first were written in the trenches during World War I. Simone Giusti writes in the Introduction that Sbarbaro's quest was to capture the ephemeral joys and sorrows of life with the right word or phrase so as to "free human beings from the hell that comes of depression, deadened senses and dulling routine."
Author City: Spotorno ITA
Camillo Sbarbaro (1888-1967), born in Santa Margherita Ligure, experimented with a hybrid form of poetry and prose that he called trucioli--"shavings." Some of the first were written in the trenches during World War I. Developing the form for more than fifty years, he published a complete set of these writings in a 400-page volume in the year before his death. The selections published in SHAVINGS: SELECTED PROSE POEMS, 1914-1940 are drawn from this corpus.
"The main inspiration here is a love for 'remnants' and 'scraps,' the poetry of failed humanity and of things that remain irremediably obscure and out of reach. Disoriented and amazed, Sbarbaro finds himself surrounded by people he doesn't understand, while life passes him by, eluding him. He can't find a country or home to call his own. True, the sweet delights of nature, the world's everyday marvels, and his astonished joy at finding himself the living focus of this spectacle that death undermines and destroys—all this is enough to keep him afloat on top of life's occurrences like a cork in the sea. Yet there are times when he realizes that these worldly displays end in smoke and ashes and that at the bottom of the full cup lie murky dregs.... Profoundly honest, and sincere to the point of absurdity, he instinctively worked to pare down and simplify his essential self, all the while scorning advantageous compromises and easy, tempting shortcuts."
—Eugenio Montale
"SHAVINGS is a revelation, and a highly welcome one. Even those who know Sbarbaro as the author of a sentimental lyric or two in the standard anthologies will be stunned by the lush descriptiveness and by the passion, fury, and sexual candor in these prose poems—all of it beautifully rendered in Gayle Ridinger's vivid and vigorous translation."
—Michael Palma