Description
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the Italian, and with a preface by John Taylor. Alfredo de Palchi, NIHIL. A profound book of poetry and prose in which the author imaginatively floats down the river of his youth, the Adige, describing scenes of beauty and horror, and commenting upon them. Each section of NIHIL leads to more remote reaches of human experience and understanding.
"Alfredo, dearest Lion! NIHIL offers superb reading and delightfully makes the reader lose his or her existential bearings. Page after page, I feel as if I am dangling from a kind of Judgment and never propped up by the earth. As if the earth, the river, the same memories that have constituted the earth, the same Time that has made up the earth, were your jungle, your realm, whereas we had been sentenced to the perspective of an endless suspended punishment. The prose parts, which especially reveal your poetic craft, create an apocalyptic impression in which gentleness—barred from the human race, which does not even establish its own kingdom—ultimately falls only to those unhappy animals that you embrace one by one. The victims."—Cristina Annino
Author Bio
Alfredo de Palchi was born in Legnano (near Verona) in 1926. His most recent book of poetry is THE AESTHETICS OF EQUILIBRIUM (Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions, 2019), translated by John Taylor. After sojourns in Paris and Barcelona in the 1950s, he moved to the United States in 1956. He first became known in Italy when his poetry collection Sessioni con l'analista (Sessions with My Analyst) appeared in 1967 at Mondadori. In the United States, Xenos Books has published four bilingual editions of de Palchi's work: NIHIL (2017), ADDICTIVE AVERSIONS (1999), ANONYMOUS CONSTELLATION (1997), and THE SCORPION'S DARK DANCE (1993). In 2013, Chelsea Editions issued his PARADIGM: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1947-2009 (2013), which includes the translation of much recent poetry previously available only in Italian. His work has been widely analyzed by critics and fellow poets, notably in Giorgio Linguaglossa's La poesia di Alfredo de Palchi (Edizioni Projetto Cultura, 2017), Plinio Perilli's Il cuore animale. Vita/romanzo e poesia/messaggio di Alfredo de Palchi (Impería, 2016), Guiseppe Panella's The Poetry of Alfredo de Palchi: An Interview and Three Essays (Chelsea Editions, 2013), A Life Gambled in Poetry: Homage to Alfredo de Palchi (Gradiva Publications, 2011), and several special issues of journals. He lives in Manhattan.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA
John Taylor (b. 1952) is an American writer, critic and translator who lives in France. His most recent book is a translation of Alfredo de Palchi's THE AESTHETICS OF EQUILIBRIUM (Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions, 2019). Taylor is the translator of Franca Mancinelli's THE LITTLE BOOK OF PASSAGE (Bitter Oleander Press, 2018) and Alfredo de Palchi's NIHIL (Xenos Books, 2017). In 2013, he won the Raiziss-de Palchi Translation Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for his project to translate the Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero. This book was later published as AN ORCHID SHINING IN THE HAND: SELECTED POEMS 1932-1960 (Chelsea Editions, 2015). Taylor has translated many other French and Francophone poets, including Philippe Jaccottet, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Louis Calaferte, Georges Perros, José-Flore Tappy, Catherine Colomb, Pierre Chappuis, and Pierre Voélin. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, including THE APOCALYPSE TAPESTRIES (Xenos Books, 2004), Now the Summer Came to Pass (Xenos Books, 2012), IF NIGHT IS FALLING (Bitter Oleander Press, 2012), THE DARK BRIGHTNESS (Xenos Books, 2017), Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press, 2017), and REMEMBRANCE OF WATER / TWENTY-FIVE TREES (Bitter Oleander Press, 2018).
Author City: FRA