My translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria, published in 2020 by Archipelago Books, has received the inaugural Joseph Tusiani Prize from the Journal of Italian Translation. I’m delighted there is now a prize to honor Tusiani, an influential translator and Italianist who died in 2020. My thanks to the judges! Read more ...
My translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s first book, Allegria, published by the amazing Archipelago Books in 2020, received the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry from the American Literary Translators Association. My thanks to the judges! Read more ...
My thanks to the editors of Poetry Daily, who have chosen “Three Grapes,” my translation of an 1892 epigram by Giovanni Pascoli, from the collection Last Dream, as today’s poem of the day. Pascoli’s poem may have been inspired by two ancient sources: Scythian philosopher Anacharsis is said to have said that vines bore three […] Read more ...
In the new issue of the New York Review of Books, I have a review-essay of two terrific novels translated by the late Frederika Randall: Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing by Guido Morselli, from New York Review Classics, and Bug by Giacomo Sartori, from Restless Books. Read more ...
My translation of the selected poems of Giovanni Pascoli, Last Dream, published by the excellent World Poetry Books in 2019, was awarded the 2020 Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize by the Academy of American Poets. My thanks to the judges! Read more ...
I’m delighted to have two pieces in the “Feverish” issue of The Literary Review: a poem called “Totem” (a sonnet about my father that owes a debt to the first section of Seamus Heaney’s “Clearances“) and a blank verse translation of a longish poem by Giovanni Pascoli called “The Kite,” from my forthcoming collection Last […] Read more ...
My translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s great poem “Fog,” which originally appeared in PN Review and just came out in the volume Last Dream (World Poetry Books, 2019), is the Poem-of-the-Day over at Poetry Daily today. My thanks to the editors! Read more ...
I have a longish (for me) poem called “Midwinter Letter,” about the 2016 election and my father’s death, in the new issue of the Yale Review, as well as a verse translation, called “The Tablecloth,” of one of my favorite poems by Giovanni Pascoli. It’s my first appearance in this great journal. Read more ...
While wandering dazedly through the AWP Book Fair in Seattle, I stumbled on Something Indecent, a lovely new anthology from the Poetry Foundation, and was delighted to find that it included my translation of one of my favorite Cesare Pavese poems, “Grappa in September,” from Disaffections. Regarding that poem, the editor, Valzhyna Mort, says: “This is how you stop a moment and turn it into eternity.” Read more ...
I contributed ten or so translations to My Poems Won’t Change the World, an excellent selection by editor Gini Alhadeff of poems by the Patrizia Cavalli, one of my favorite contemporary Italian poets. Read more ...