Luigi
Fontanella: Poems from The Transparent Life
Translated into English by Michael Palma.
THE
TRANSPARENT LIFE | TO A GIRL IN A
SPEEDWASH | NEDELIA | SONG
FOR PAOLO CONTE
 Luigi
Fontanella, born in Salerno, Italy, in 1943, studied at the University
of Rome and at Harvard, where he earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages
and Literatures. He has served as a Fulbright Fellow (Princeton
University, 1976-1978), and has 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, Fontanella is the editor
of Gradiva, [P.O. Box 831, Stony Brook, NY 11790] an international
journal of Italian poetry. He has published ten books of poetry,
two books of fiction, and six books of criticism. His forthcoming
book of poetry is Angels of Youth, translated from the
Italian by Carol Lettieri and Irene Marchegiani Jones (Riverside:
Xenos Books, 2000). 
Please
scroll down to read sample poems from The Transparent Life.
translated by Michael Palma, Gradiva Publications:
P.O. Box 831, Stony Brook, NY 11790
Review excerpts of Luigi Fontanella's work:
 "Fontanella's
poetic language has a quality of disenchanted transparency, always
containing a sort of suspended bitterness toward the elusive signs
of our existence, signs that question themselves, that show themselves
lovingly and visibly, but that, at the same time, slip away. I
find this to be a particularly seductive element of his poetry."--GIULIO
FERRONI
"Luigi
Fontanella is the single poet who has made in the last two decades
the most sustained contribution to the organization and diffusion
of Italian poetry in the United States. His poetic battle speaks
directly to the concern of all of us who write Italian poetry
in the New World."--PAOLO VALESIO
Luigi
Fontanella appeared at Poets House in New York City on November
2nd as distinguished commissioned translator of the winner
of the 2000 Bordighera Poetry Prize, Luisa Rossina Villani.
Here the translator is pictured with the winning poet at
a bilingual reading of her work from Running Away from
Russia (Bordighera). |
"In these times of fashionable pessimism and
of a cynical refusal to sing the basic themes of lived life -
the love of origins, of parents, of companions and children; the
pain of lost youth, of distance, of unreachable dreams - Fontanella
dares to remain true to the sources and goals of his poetic making.
He is a deracinated Italian, and he writes of the betweenness
of his existence, often with recourse to the theme of travel,
of leavetaking and returning. He is a son who now recognizes himself
in his father, being himself a father. He is a child again because
of his little daughter whose innocence reminds him "qual
era" that boy now gone forever."--REBECCA
J. WEST
THE
TRANSPARENT LIFE
The
city opens its streets,
bicycles
pass without riders,
a
woman's face appears
in
the window and vanishes,
shopwindows
offer lusts
for
every season,
turning
of lives:
a
slim graceful couple dances
in
the deserted square,
the
running of man's race,
in
the forest foliage stirs
against
the light,
footprints
on leaves
and
tracks of hardened mud,
autumn
avenue
royal
carriage
rain
of dew
and
paper:
the
transparent life.
TO
A GIRL IN A SPEEDWASH
Still
before me with eyes and hands through so many days circles
closed
cycles air heat voices movements crunch crunch in the mouth
of
a little black boy one after another
there's
nothing sadder that these laundries on the edge of town
coin-operated
ones with no counterwoman to chat with about the weather
there
you find a kind of girl who's already a woman
I
don't mean a babydoll covergirl
hollywoodized
plasticized merchandised up-for-sale
massproduced
release valve for halfnumbed Americans
I
mean another kind of course like this one who takes the trouble
to
fold the four dresses she's washed and dried
the
faded napkins the socks with the holes
to
be mended later the frayed T-shirts
the
grease stain that hasn't come out
the
sheet patched a hundred times she'll fold with the help
of
the little one she's brought along with her (her sister?
her
daughter already? or another girl-woman like her?).
NEDELIA
(Et
que j'irai la'-bas,
Fair'
dodo z'avec elle.
J'entends
mon coeur qui bat,
C'est
maman qui
m'appelle!
- Jules Laforgue
Microelegy
for my mother (17 may 1925 - 28 November 1982 )
I
Sweetbriar
I gather one for you
without
a thorn. You will smile for me
maybe,
tomorrow morning.
II
You
smile Nedelia ginestra
from
this infant's window:
you
appear
and
disappear in an instant
infinite
scaledglass
shadow
sudden light
life
passes by
yours
mine.
III
Bright
fleur-de-lis summery
hawthorn
trees, estranged,
fulltable
festival
of bees.
IV
On
flowering branches
on
twisting branches
lost
in ethereal green brilliance
your
living dead disappearing season,
spring,
has
taken wing.
V
In
a dream I saw
all
of your sunlight. A small
easy
gift. But from this turmoil
the
whole
of
my love.
VI
From
this halfclosed window,
I
see you once again,
a
little sad, mother,
as
when you called to me:
I
turn I answer you I call I run
amid
thousands of corollas and coronas.
How
peacefully I sleep
in
this illusion.
VII
I
have colored all the flowers
in
my enchanted greenhouse:
nothing
else is left of my song. Tomorrow
they
will be gathered
by
all
my
dead.
SONG
FOR PAOLO CONTE
Time
tonight is a tired dancer
a
masker whistling on a deserted pier
whistling
a tune obsessively repeated
while
love's last look is fading in the mist
my
thoughts evicted, and my memories...
absurd
and murky shapes, reefs in the distance.
My
spirit, there won't be another dawn,
the
outline of this window
open
to the night tells of exhausted joys
extinguished
visions stilled lakes
old
sealed-up illnesses.
Crossed
seasons pass
before
the windows, seasons
scattered
by the wind...
the
long-ago smiles of the women behind the doors
their
sidelong glances
as
a little boy
came
running rolling his hoop around the bend...
Time
tonight is a tired dancer.
Translations
Copyright © 2000 by Michael Palma. Poems © 2000 by Luigi
Fontanella. All rights reserved.
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from: Gradiva Publications: P.O. Box 831, Stony Brook, NY 11790]
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