Franco Buffoni. Wings: Selected Poems 2000-2005.(Book review)

Franco Buffoni. Wings: Selected Poems 2000-2005. Emanuel di Pasquale, tr. New York. Chelsea. 2008. 131 pages. $20. ISBN 978-0-9725271-5-6

Franco Buffoni (b. 2948) has been among Italy's celebrated poets since the 1990s, a professor of comparative literature in Rome who also edits a respected journal of literary criticism. This sophisticated bilingual collection, lucidly translated by poet Emanuel di Pasquale, has just been published in the impressive Chelsea Editions series. Wings includes three startling sequences--two fleeting tableaus of boyhood from The Profile of Mount Rosa and Theios, and the graphic strophes of torture from Guerra.

Buffoni's …