The Flower of Youth
The Flower of Youth

Author: Mary di Michele

Publisher: ECW Press

Published: 2011-09

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 177090106X

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Written as a kind of historical narrative in verse, the poems in this collection depict the coming of age and sexual awareness of the great Italian writer and film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. The time of this story is World War II; the place is German-occupied northern Italy. Unlike his younger brother, Guido, who took up arms to fight in the resistance, Pasolini chose to help his mother set up a school for the boys too young to fight or be conscripted. The situation ignited an internal war for the young Pasolini that nearly eclipsed the historical moment: a battle within between his desire for boys and his Catholic faith and culture. In addition to the poems that juxtapose Pasolini’s struggle against the backdrop of political and cultural fascism, the book also includes a prologue and an epilogue that details the author’s pilgrimage to the site and her research into the time that shaped Pasolini as a man and as an artist.

The Bones of Cuttlefish
The Bones of Cuttlefish

Author: Eugenio Montale

Publisher: Oakville, Ont. : Mosaic Press

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13: 9780889621978

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The first book of Montale's poems is one of the greatest of modern poetry. Its place is just next to Alfred Prufrock and Other Observations, The Elegies of Duino, Signe ascendant by Andre Breton and other important books of poetry of this century. Although it has been translated into English at various occassions, Antonio Mazza's translation should be praised and recognized as one of the best. Mazza has been translating Montale for some years. this choice would seem to be a matter of faithfulness to the voice whose language, also Mazza's mother tongue, is Italian, with all its musical, rhythmical, incantatory and lexical implications.