Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems
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- € 16,99
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- € 16,99
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Award-winning new translations of a major contemporary Italian poet
Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems collects forty-five poems by Fabio Pusterla, one of the most distinguished Italian-language poets writing today. Born in Switzerland and resident in Italy, Pusterla engages the pressing moral concerns of his age and excavates the hidden realities of our concrete world. These are poems of disquieting Alpine landscapes and rift zones, filled with curious fauna, lanced with troubling memories, built “from the bottom, from the margins, from outside” the mainstream.
Pusterla is the author of eight critically acclaimed books of poetry and has received several major literary prizes. Selected and translated by Will Schutt, himself an award-winning poet, this volume draws from Pusterla’s six most recent collections to capture a wide range of the poet’s work. With English translations and Italian originals on facing pages, Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems deftly introduces one of Europe’s most ambitious, imaginative, and humane poets to English-speaking readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The skillfully translated first English-language edition of Pusterla's work spans landscapes, memories, dreams, wars, and the ordinariness of daily life, energetically rendering a voice of striking attention, one willing to notice near-constant juxtapositions: "Even in summer,/ there's always that puddle." Reminiscing on the aging lives of Pusterla's former students, "Students" concludes with a final image of the poet: "Then there's me,/ carrying cucumbers and a roll of TP." Pusterla's voice is a kindly light in the midst of darkness, taking note of peculiarities and humor, where "All it takes is a break in the clouds to change everything, a little light to color the world." Despite their proximity to violence and loss ("For a Fallen Worker" describes the "outline/ of an angel in freefall, a sudden jet/ of blood to wash from the Babylonian/ storefronts"), these poems "experiment with hope" honestly and carefully, accumulating the details that make up each life. "Admit it," one piece insists, again and again, before ending: "smile." Pusterla's poetry reminds readers of the form's purpose and power, how it makes the world—when noticed fully—something worth living for. (Apr.)
