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A Letter from the Virus (Italian with English subtitles)
This is one of the most powerful messages I‘ve heard or seen related to our current distress. There is a version with the audio in English here, but somehow the Italian seems to carry more urgency. (Probably a subjective response to the sonic richness of that language.) But in any tongue, the message is something we all need to hear. Please share…. Film by Darinka Montico. English subtitles by EllaHellas. See here for a video narrated by the poem’s author, as well as the text of the original poem, which differs in significant ways from Ms.Read More
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Poetry Month 2015: Italian Aphorists
Aphorisms often turn up embedded in poems—”Old men ought to be explorers“; “If there is a trail, you have taken a wrong turn“; “Age is the bilge / we cannot shake from the mop“; “I will try / to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening / scope, but enjoying the freedom that / Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision, / that I have perceived nothing completely, / that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk“; etc.—but the art of writing pure aphorisms is a special skill.Read More
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Putin’s “Evil” and a Map-in-Flux
Just stumbled on this wonderful aphorism by the Italian writer Amedeo Ansaldi at James Geary’s aphorism blog: We always choose our enemies among those whom we would have liked to become. They are our lost image.Read More
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An Addendum
L’autoritratto di Montale. 1952. My last Friday Notebook post should have included the following—a translation of Montale‘s famous sunflower poem, occasioned by a request from Conrad DiDiodato for versions of it to be published on his blog. Conrad himself and Annie Wyndham (see here and here) have weighed in as well. I highly recommend that you visit Conrad’s post and contribute your own version, just for fun.Read More
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The Dilemma of Multiple Translations
Ron Slate has a thorough and thoughtful review here of the recently released Songbook: Selected Poems of Umberto Saba, from Yale University Press. If my pockets weren’t empty of everything but balls of lint I’d snap up a copy, but this publication—as sometimes happens with translations—presents a dilemma: I already have a copy of Songbook: Selected Poems from the Canzoniere of Umberto Saba, published in 1998 by The Sheep Meadow Press.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
