Sunday, January 19, 2020

GIOVANNI PASCOLI ~






Giovanni Pascoli "addresses the deepest part of himself" and in doing so

addresses the nature of language. Here is a moral harmony, a manifesto for

a poetry of common memory and dream. Pascoli, quite simply, names truth;

while of the nineteenth century, he is utterly contemporary. There is much

of timeless poetics here, something of Blake's visionary innocence, something

of Whitman's self-contradictions, yet Pascoli has his own tragic sadness to

reconcile: He is unique.

In John Martone he has met his perfect translator. Martone matches

Pascoli's erudition and intelligent ordering. He brings us a clarity from the

limpid and sometimes conflicting apparent simplicity of Pascoli's work.

O Little One is vital to everyone who loves poetry.

— Gerry Loose



Laertes
2019