In this first US publication of celebrated Italian poet Bianca Tarozzi, narrative poems (presented bilingually in both English and the original Italian) carry us through the poet's childhood memories of World War II under Mussolini, harsh post-war conditions, and mid-century changes that transformed Italian life, specifically for women. A unique figure in contemporary Italian poetry, Tarozzi draws significant influence from acclaimed American poets—Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill—interweaving powerful subjects with humor and heart.
After:
you have packed the suitcase, shut off the gas,
turned all the lights out, locked the window
and the big outside door,
when you lean against a wall, afraid of falling,
and wait, expecting the vehicle,
the means that will transport you
far away,
when the sky sails clear,
blue, and annihilating above the overpass,
and you have no past or future,
in that empty moment
poetry pitches its tent.
Bianca Tarozzi was born in Bologna in 1941. Her father was a political prisoner under Mussolini, and then a Senator after the war. She received a degree from Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and taught English and American Literature for many years at the University of Verona. The recipient of numerous literary honors, she has translated into Italian the works of Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Richard Wilbur, A. E. Housman, Denise Levertov, and Louise Gluck. Also the author of many books of poetry, she began writing poems in 1947, and continues to this day. She currently splits her time between Venice and Milan, Italy.
Author Biography:
Bianca Tarozzi was born in Bologna in 1941. Her father was a political prisoner under Mussolini, and then a Senator after the war. She received a degree from Ca’Foscari in Venice, where she also taught. Until her recent retirement, she taught English and American Literature at the University of Verona. The recipient of numerous literary honors, including a residency at the Villa Serbelloni, she has translated into Italian the works of: Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Richard Wilbur, A. E. Housman, Denise Levertov, and Louise Gluck. She has written and edited several scholarly books, among them a study of Robert Lowell’s sonnets, which predated most American work on the subject. Also the author of many books of poetry, she began writing poems in 1947, and continues to this day. A novel about her parents’ marriage, Una luce settle (A Subtle Light) was published in 2015. She currently splits her time between Venice and Milan, Italy.
Jeanne Foster is Professor Emerita of English Literature and Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California. Her poems have appear widely in such places as the Hudson Review, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, Literary Imagination, and others. Her most recent collection is Goodbye, Silver Sister (Northwestern, 2015). She is co-editor of Appetite: Food as Metaphor (BOA, 2002). The First Workshop: a Memoir of James Wright was published in American Poetry Review (2001). Her critical work, A Music of Grace, explores the sacred in contemporary American poetry (Lang, 1995). For Instants of Faith (1985), she translated a group of 25 poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez. Other poetry collections include Great Horned Owl (White Pine, 1980) and A Blessing of Safe Travel, which won the Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Award (Princeton, 1980). A finalist for the 2015 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Award, she has received grants from the Woodrow Wilson, CAPS, MacDowell, and St. Lawrence foundations. She is also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. She currently divides her time between Berkeley, CA, and Le Convertoie, a medieval borgo in Tuscany.
Alan Williamson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Davis, and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He is the author of five books of poems: Presence (Knopf, 1983), The Muse of Distance (Knopf, 1988), Love and the Soul (Chicago, 1995), Res Publica (Chicago, 1998), and The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems (Chicago, 2004). His books of literary criticism are Pity the Monsters: The Political Vision of Robert Lowell (Yale, 1974), Introspection and Contemporary Poetry (Harvard, 1984), Eloquence and Mere Life (Michigan, 1994), Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification (Virginia, 2001), and Westernness: A Meditation (Virginia, 2006). He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. He has been a referee and/or panelist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacArthur Foundation. He has published other translations from the Italian, including a complete version of Pavese’s Death Will Come and Look at Me with Your Eyes in the American Poetry Review. He currently lives in Berkeley, CA.
