Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms by Ardengo Soffici, trans. by Olivia E. Sears
A vital reconstruction of Italian Futurist poet Ardengo Soffici’s visual poetics, presented for the first time in English in Olivia E. Sears’s exacting translations.
With a foreword by Marjorie Perloff.
With unexpected lyricism, buzzing between the entropic and the erotic, Soffici’s unrelenting poems manifest his milieu’s fascination with the metropolis. Guillaume Apollinaire called it “very important work, rich in fresh beauties.” This facsimile-style edition—with a foreword by Marjorie Perloff, helpful annotations, and an informative afterword by the translator—offers a glimpse into the vibrant early avant-garde, when modernity held tremendous promise.
“A very important work, rich in fresh beauties.” —Guillaume Apollinaire
“Sears’s translation is superb. It is exciting to meet a new writer, so wonderfully introduced to us by Marjorie Perloff’s excellent preface. Brava!” —Mary Ann Caws, editor of the Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry
“Ardengo Soffici’s Franco-Italian Futurist poetry will leave you shaken and stirred like that first martini of the afternoon. And Olivia Sears’s translation will make you see stars (as Soffici hits you upside the head) as well as heart-breaking wonders in the streets of Paris, Florence, and Rome: ‘Delight electric breath molecules expanding with the air along the geometry of open houses.’” —James Brook, translator of A Blaze in a Desert: Selected Poems by Victor Serge
World Poetry Books
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