The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations

Dario Bellezza (Author)

What Sex Is Death?

3,Dario Bellezza--Italy's first openly gay, major prize winning poet-novelist-playwright--was a bold, daring writer who energetically explored love, sexual transformation, and death. Bellezza embraced a variety of forms, from unabashed love-lyric to political narrative, and the fervor of his voice makes a compelling argument for his lasting importance as one of the most remarkable poets of the late twentieth century. Yet, until now, his work has never been available in English. Award-winning translator Peter Covino offers a wide-ranging selection of representative poetry from Bellezza's career. Influenced by Rimbaud, the Beats, and the growing European gay rights movements, his poetry remains innovative and timely. Ranging from stray cats in the graveyards of Rome, to the literal and metaphoric fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, to the joys and disappointments of random hookups, Bellezza's dazzling visions will sparkle in readers' eyes like sunspots long after they complete this magnificent volume.

Caroline M. Mar (Author)

Water Guest

8,Lake Tahoe: home of the Washoe Tribe, a shining blue jewel that crowns the Sierra Nevada, and a beloved American vacation destination made accessible by the transcontinental railroad built largely by Chinese laborers. This gorgeous location forms the site from which Caroline M. Mar's stunning collection, Water Guest, seeks to reconcile issues of identity, ownership, and place. Mar's attempts to locate herself geographically, genealogically, and etymologically echo throughout the poems. A direct ancestor was a railroad laborer; is that why her love for the land feels older than herself? Or is it the siren call of the deep, clear water? Raising questions of inheritance, the conundrum of land ownership, and the violence of history, Mar gives voice to the lost writing of Chinese laborers and silent communion to those of us still here--immigrant and Indigenous, settler and resister. This engaging collection finds acceptance, if not resolution, through the questions themselves.

Amy Gerstler (Author)

Is This My Final Form?

6, A poet renowned for her "wit and complexity" (Poetry Foundation) explores the endless evolution and malleability of life on earth in her most curious, inventive collection to date Aren't we all shape-shifters? Is any animal, vegetable, or mineral--even a commonplace object--what it seems to be at any given moment? Who isn't juggling constant transformations, conflicting roles, changing loyalties, loves, perceptions, and selves, all while being pummeled by shifting devotions, emotions, and obsessions? Do even the dead continue to evolve in surprising ways? Reveling in these questions, Gerstler's latest protean poetry collection includes loose sonnets, shapely praise of Mae West, the lament of an actor who can't shed his costume, dramatic monologues, whiffs of gender slippage, a love lyric to the bride of Frankenstein, and a ten-minute play.