Luigi Fontanella
LAND OF TIME
SELECTED POEMS 1972-2003
Translations by various hands
Edited by Irene Marchegiani
Introduction by Dante Della Terza
Paperback, 234 pages
ISBN 0-9725271-3-3
$20
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LUIGI FONTANELLA, born in Salerno, Italy, earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and taught at Columbia, Princeton and Wellesley. He is currently Professor of Italian at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Founder and President of the Italian Poetry Society of America, he is the editor of Gradiva, an international journal of Italian and Italian-American poetry. He has published ten collections of poetry, two books of fiction and seven books of literary criticism.
"Luigi Fontanella's poems
are very much in the tradition of what post-Montalean modern Italian verse
has come to mean. His search for modernity is twofold: trying to bring the
idiom of poetry as close to everyday language—whether written or spoken,
journalistic or literary—as possible; and to objectify one's feelings
and thoughts through a profuse multiplicity of details and impressions concerning
the world of everyday reality. Whereas verbal experimentalism—often taking
the form of an astute play on words or the use of technical, scientific words
and phrases—is the consequence of the first aim, the consequence of the
second is a kind of subtly camouflaged autobiography in verse and a search
for personal identity."
~ G. Singh
"There's a great freedom
of forms and intonations in Luigi Fontanella's poetry He doesn't take a strong
formal stand; his poetry entertains moments of nearly proselike colloquial
narrative along with moments of powerful lyrical tension. There is a movement
of extremes, from powerful tonality to near atonality, and I like this a great
deal; it's a stance that very effectively catches the spirit that makes work
in poetry possible nowadays."
~ Giovanni Raboni
"Luigi Fontanella moves between countries as an Italian who has lived in the United States for many years but returns very often to his native land. In this collection, he draws on his experience in both countries, and he is also forever moving between past and future, between those people and places of the present and future by whom and in which he will perhaps be best remembered. Fontanella's poetry is rooted in both a profound critical awareness of the labor of poetry, and a wide embrace of life's labors—and joys, all of which merge in his 'pure azur memory.'"
~ Rebecca J. West
