Description
Poetry. Trilingual Edition. Translated from the original English into the Italian by Chiara Curtoni, and into the Sicilian by Nino Provenzano. With engravings by Michael McCurdy. "Truly an homage to the sonnet form of the Sicilian School, the nine poems in A NEW LIFE WITH BIANCA are vibrant with contemporary clarity of word and thought; yet, the sonnets embrace the poetic form of Iacopo da Lentini, an innovative poet of another era. This trilingual work is a gift of life and yearnings well expressed and clearly up-to-date, yet enveloped in long standing literary tradition. For a reader who loves the richness and expressive possibilities of the English language, the musicality of Italian in the translations by Dr. Chiara Curtoni added pleasure, and the Sicilian versions by Nino Provenzano went straight to the heart."—Giovanna Bellia La Marca
"Frank Polizzi's sonnet series is a discourse among three cultures. He honors the history of the sonnet form by having his original English text translated into Sicilian and Italian. Polizzi has cleverly distilled the history of the sonnet into a voice that speaks simultaneously in three languages: the original medieval Sicilian sonneteer, the Dante of La Vita Nuova, and the modern descendent of this still living and evolving form. Polizzi's sonnets mirror the tradition they succinctly annotate, from Platonic love and erotic sex to betrayal, loss, and death. In the end, Polizzi's Bianca is as unattainable as Dante's Beatrice. Thoughtful as well as inspired, Polizzi has added yet another dimension to the tradition of the sonnet."—Ken Scambray
"As if love itself decided it could not to be conveyed in only one language, Frank Polizzi follows its lead and puts forth a poignant multilingual collection of nine love sonnets in A NEW LIFE WITH BIANCA. Polizzi pays homage to the joys and sorrows of love, and to the tradition of the Italian sonnet, as he takes up the voice of a modern-day troubadour, as Chiara Curtoni masterfully translates the sonnets into Italian, and Nino Provenzano evokes our first sonneteer—the Sicilian, Iacopo da Lentini. Readers will discover not only musicality flowing in multiple tones, but also visual art (in nine engravings by Michael McCurdy) that follows each moving poem's trajectory—laden with wonder, desire, intimacy, union and separation—the whole of one man's life with his beloved. In unflinching meditations Polizzi enters he deep places where love is first lit and radiantly glows. These poems demand that love not be forgotten, and our inner landscape are made infinitely richer by the power of love, its rhythms, and all its fragile in-betweens."—Marisa Frasca