Author Biography

Ennio Contini (1914-2006) was born in Oristano, on the island of Sardinia, and later lived in Savona, in northwestern Italy. During the late 1930s he began to publish literary and cultural essays in nationally prominent periodicals; his first book of poetry, Magnolia, appeared in 1939. Serving as an officer in the Italian army during World War II, Contini was wounded in battle. At the end of the war he was tried for his military service and condemned to death, a sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. Ultimately, he served nine years in the prisons of Savona, Procida and Civitavecchia. In 1952 he published L'Alleluja, poems largely based on his prison experiences, in a volume that also contained the first ten of Ezra Pound's Cantos in Italian translation. Contini's later publications were the poetry collections Schegge d'anima / Splinters of Soul (1962) and Viaggio nel buio / Journey Into the Dark (1969). The three cited books, plus unpublished poems, are represented in the present collection. They evoke scenes of sea and countryside, love and family life, cries from a soul condemned, and hope for the future. They are written in a high style, with accessible meaning. Michael Palma has previously translated sixteen books of Italian poets, including prizewinning volumes of Guido Gozzano and Diego Valeri and a fully rhymed translation of Dante's Inferno. He has two previous translations with Chelsea Editions: Maurizio Cucchi's No Part to Play: Selected Poems 1965-2009, and Giovanni Raboni's Every Third Thought: Selected Poems 1950-2004. His own books of poetry are The Egg Shape, Antibodies, A Fortune in Gold, Begin in Gladness, and an online chapbook, The Ghost of Congress Street. He has written about his art in FAITHFUL IN MY FASHION: ESSAYS ON THE TRANSLATION OF POETRY (Xenos-Chelsea, 2017), also available at SPD.