Convivial Poems

GIOVANNI PASCOLI(1855–1912) is renowned as one of the founders of modern Italian poetry. Embodying the Zeitgeist of fin-de-siècle Italy, his works are inspired by French Symbolism and Decadentism. They also draw on the classical tradition so alive in Italian culture. His unique poetic voice is filled with traditional metrical forms, an uncanny use of onomatopoeic language, and a multilingual vocabulary. He fills his depiction of nature with haunting images and a disquieting sensitivity. Convivial Poems, translated by Elena Borelli and James Ackhurst, consists of twenty poems, with facing Italian and English, each devoted to a classical figure, fictional or historical. It represents one of Pascoli’s highest achievements. Like Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce’s Ulysses, and contemporary post-modernist works, it revisits the classical world to draw new symbols for the modern condition. “One of the greatest poets of all times.” — Seamus Heaney Introduction, notes, glossary, dual-language poetry.— Google Books