Reading by Italian poet Paolo Valesio

Speakers): Paolo Valesio

The Department of French and Italian cordially invites you to a reading by Italian poet Paolo Valesio. The event will be held on Friday, April 26, 4-5.30pm in Pigott Hall (Building 260), Room 216. Valesio will read poetry from his latest collection, Esploratrici Solitarie, in the original Italian alongside English translations read by Prof. Laura Wittman.
 
Valesio says the following about Esploratrici Solitarie:
 
Esploratrici solitarie (Solitary Female Explorers) is a book of poems, that is, a work with a narrative thread, rather than simply a collection of disparate poems. The "female explorers" are not characters in the poems: they are personifications of the poems themselves. (In Italian, the grammatical gender of poesia 'poem' is feminine.)
These exploring poems are solitary in the sense that they have advanced so far in an unknown territory with respect to their base (i.e., the poetic tradition immediately preceding them) that they are left to fend for themselves, like advanced commandos with respect to the rest of the army. (This similarity is of course, like all similarities, a simplification; specifically, these poems are not: (1) particularly bellicose  (2) programmatically experimental or avantgarde.)
The book's narrative is essentially the "narration" of a psychological or spiritual voyage, that goes through three main locations: Paesaggi (landscapes), Città (cities), and finally Dimore (dwelling places).
 
About the speaker – Essayist, poet and fiction writer Paolo Valesio is Giuseppe Ungaretti Professor Emeritus in Italian Literature at Columbia University, where he concluded his academic career after having taught at New York University and Yale University. Since 2013 he’s been the president of the Centro Studi Sara Valesio (CSSV) in Bologna (www.centrostudisaravalesio.com). At Yale, Valesio founded and directed the “Yale Poetry Group,” which was active from 1993 to 2003. In 1997 he also founded and directed the journal “Yale Italian Poetry- YIP,” which in 2006 became the “Italian Poetry Review – IPR” at Columbia and currently operates between New York, Florence and Bologna. He’s the author of essays and works of criticism, includingGabriele d’Annunzio: The Dark Flame; the editor and co-editor of numerous literary texts, including Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Venezianella and Studentaccio; and he collaborates with a variety of journals and reviews. He is also the author of three novels, many works of shorter fiction and has written for the theater. Since 1979 he has published 21 poetry collections, the most recent one in 2018 with the title Esploratrici Solitarie. Poesie 1990-2017. Valesio has been the recipient of many rewards, including the Special Prize at the XXIX Edition of the Premio Letterario Camaiore (2017), the career achievement award “Civetta di Minerva” (2018), and, with Esploratrici Solitarie, the special distinction for poetry “Lorenzo Calogero” at theRhegium Julii literary award in Reggio Calabria (2018).