Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems - (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation) by Fabio Pusterla (Paperback)

About the Book

"Pusterla is a contemporary Swiss poet who writes in Italian. This volume is a selection from Pusterla's six most recent books of poetry, published in Italian. The poems create a solid sense of place-mountains, lakes, streams, villages, occasionally a city. They move from precise and delicate observations of creatures, plants, and atmosphere to harshly historical and sociological pieces, wounded by Italy's past and present. They find striking and unpredictable ways into their subjects, often ending on a surprising, crystallized image. And, in the series editors' words, "the translations compel throughout- through their cadence, pacing, assonance, and tactful alliteration-their texture and their touch. The effect of the whole-of the supple verse renderings and the prose poetry- is of lively variety in theme, point of view, and form, and Pusterla/Schutt in this manuscript emerges as an authentic, original, passionate albeit subtle voice.""--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Winner of the Joseph Tusiani Italian Translation Prize, Calandra Italian American Institute"

"As with Leopardi, in spite of the poet's despair, it is the poetry that brings its own consolation. No doubt Pusterla would agree with W.H. Auden that, as a poet, all he has is a voice or, to quote his own beautifully cadenced and defiant words at the end of 'Landscape' 'E le parole: nessuno adesso me le ruberà, '/ 'And words: now no one will rob me of them.'"---David Cooke, The High Window

"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 juxtaposition. . . . Pusterla's voice is a kindly light in the midst of darkness."-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Fabio Pusterla is a prolific poet, essayist, and translator, most notably of the work of Philippe Jaccottet. His honors include the Swiss Schiller Prize, the Gottfried Keller-Preis, and the Premio Napoli for lifetime achievement. Will Schutt is the author of Westerly, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and translator of My Life, I Lapped It Up: Selected Poems of Edoardo Sanguineti, among other works from Italian. For his translations of Fabio Pusterla's poetry he received the Raiziss/de Palchi Award from the Academy of American Poets.