Among the Tufted Canes: Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry | The Nation

Among the Tufted Canes: Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry | The Nation

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry Anthology

Poetry is what is lost in translation - R. Frost

"A surprising and illuminating collection, The FSG Book of 20th-Century Italian Poetry invites the reader to examine the works of these and other poets—seventy-five in all—in context and conversation with one another. Edited by the poet and translato Geoffrey Brock, these poems have been beautifully rendered into English by some of our finest English-language poets"  -  us. macmillan.com 

" the opening lines of Montale’s manifesto-like poem “The Lemons” are translated into English, in this case by Galassi, who is himself a fine poet..."  ( source: The Nation ,April 10, 2012)

Listen to me, the poets laureate
walk only among plants
with rare names: boxwood, privet, an
ditches where boys
scoop up a few starved
eels out of half-dry puddles:
paths that run along the banks,
come down among the tufted canes,
and end in orchards, among the lemon trees

Here, my translation:

          Listen, laureate poets
          Only move through trees
          With not many used names:  Boxus, Ligustrum or Acanthus.
          I prefer country-roads that open onto the green
          Edges where boys are clutching
          in some sinking pools 
          Some very poor eels . 
          And the  lanes following the edges

          Sloping through the cane  clumps

          Leading into the orchards, among the trees of lemon grove

and my post about translating "I Limoni" Prolegomena ad una traduzione di Montale

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 The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology

Autore Geoffrey Brock
Curatore Geoffrey Brock
Edizione illustrata 
EditoreFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012
ISBN0374105383, 9780374105389
Lunghezza 672 pagine