Description
Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Sonia Raiziss. "ANONYMOUS CONSTELLATION follows an evolutionary pattern: it starts with iconic reflections on primordial cosmic life, proceeds to meditations on human history and ends with statements about the poet himself. Evolution is thus both a theme and a structural element of the collection." But with characteristic originality, De Palchi defies the idea of evolutionary progress, asserting instead that "violence levels all creatures and brings them back to their primeval state." The cycle of poems thus presents a view of history turned upside down: history does not instruct, does not help, but only repeats the great struggle, pitting human beings against other human beings, human beings against animals, animals against other animals. These are poems that stun and compel reflection."—Alessandro Vettori, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature Rutgers University
Author Bio
Alfredo de Palchi (1926-2020) was one of the major Italian poets of the last century and the beginning of the present century. He was born in Legnano, near Verona. As a teenager in World War II Italy, he was grabbed by self- proclaimed authorities, charged with a murder and thrown into prison. There he was tortured, but refused to confess. A fellow prisoner told him about François Villon, and he scratched his first poem on the wall of his cell. He spent the years of 1945-1951 in prison. In 1955 the Court of Assizes in Venice cleared him of charges, and after sojourns in Paris and Barcelona he came to America. Continuing to publish in his native tongue in Italy, he published bilingual editions of his work in New York with deft English translations, first by Isidore Salomon, then by Sonia Raiziss, and lastly by John Taylor. More than any other person in America, he faithfully promoted Italian poetry and prose, both with the New York journal Chelsea, which he ran from 1960 to 2007, and with his non-profit publishing house Chelsea Editions, which remained active up to the time of his death in August from leukemia. His first poetry collection, Sessioni con l'analista [Sessions with My Analyst], appeared in 1967 with Mondadori and won immediate acclaim. In the United States, following Sessions, he published exclusively with Xenos Books: THE SCORPION'S DARK DANCE (1993), ANONYMOUS CONSTELLATION (1997), ADDICTIVE AVERSIONS (1999), NIHIL (2017), THE AESTHETICS OF EQUILIBRIUM (2019) and now TERMINAL EVENTS (2020). He issued his collected works in 2013 with Chelsea Editions under the title PARADIGM: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1947-2009.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA