Locomotrix
Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli, a Bilingual Edition
A musician, musicologist, and self-defined “poet of research,” Amelia Rosselli (1930–96) was one of the most important poets to emerge from Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Following a childhood and adolescence spent in exile from Fascist Italy between France, England, and the United States, Rosselli was driven to express the hopes and devastations of the postwar epoch through her demanding and defamiliarizing lines. Rosselli’s trilingual body of work synthesizes a hybrid literary heritage stretching from Dante and the troubadours through Ezra Pound and John Berryman, in which playful inventions across Italian, English, and French coexist with unadorned social critique. In a period dominated by the confessional mode, Rosselli aspired to compose stanzas characterized by a new objectivity and collective orientation, “where the I is the public, where the I is things, where the I is the things that happen.” Having chosen Italy as an “ideal fatherland,” Rosselli wrote searching and often discomposing verse that redefined the domain of Italian poetics and, in the process, irrevocably changed the Italian language.
This collection, the first to bring together a generous selection of her poems and prose in English and in translation, is enhanced by an extensive critical introduction and notes by translator Jennifer Scappettone. Equipping readers with the context for better apprehending Rosselli’s experimental approach to language, Locomotrix seeks to introduce English-language readers to the extraordinary career of this crucial, if still eclipsed, voice of the twentieth century.
Academy of American Poets: Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize
Won
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Stanza as “Homicile”: The Poetry of Amelia Rosselli
Poems in Italian
Da Primi scritti (1952–1963) / From First Writings (1952–1963)
Prime prose italiane (1954) / First Italian Prose (1954)
Da Palermo 63 (1963) / From Palermo 63 (1963)
Da La libellula: Panegirico della libertà (1958) / From The Libellula: Panegyric to Liberty (1958)
Da Variazioni belliche (1964) / From Bellicose Variations (1964)
Poesie (1959) / Poems (1959)
Da Variazioni (1960–1961) / From Variations (1960–1961)
Da Serie ospedaliera (1963–1965) / From Hospital Series (1963–1965)
Da Diario ottuso: Nota (1967–1968) / From Obtuse Diary: Note (1967–1968)
Da Documento (1966–1973) / From Document (1966–1973)
Da Appunti sparse e persi: Poesie (1966–1977) / From Notes Scattered and Lost: Poems (1966–1977)
Da Impromptu (1981) / From Impromptu (1981)
Uncollected
Between Languages
From October Elizabethans (October 1956): On Fatherish Men
From Diary in Three Tongues (1955–1956): Parts IX, XI
From Sleep: Poems in English (1953–1966)
Poetics
Introduction to “Metrical Spaces” (1993)
Metrical Spaces (1962)
Extreme Facts: An Interview with Giacinto Spagnoletti (1987)
From the Correspondence
To John Rosselli, 12 February 1951
To John Rosselli, 9 November 1952
To Pier Paolo Pasolini, 19 April 1962
To Pier Paolo Pasolini, 21 June 1962
On Amelia Rosselli
A Note on Amelia Rosselli, by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1963)
Amelia Rosselli: Documento, by Andrea Zanzotto (1976, 1994)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Titles and First Lines
Literature and Literary Criticism: Poetry | Romance Languages
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