Sleep: Poesie in inglese

by Amelia Rosselli

English, Italian

Genres: Poetry, Italy, Italian Literature

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Amelia Rosselli (Paris, 28 March 1930 – Rome, 11 February 1996) was an italian poet, organist ed etnomusicologist.

Daughter of the antifascist activist Carlo Rosselli, exiled in Paris, and of Marion Catherine Cave, activist of the British Labourist Party. In 1940, after the murder of her father and his uncle ordered by Mussolini, she lived in exile with her family; this experience had a heavy influence on her poetical works.

Amelia Rosselli lived in Svitzerland and later in USA. She studied literature, philosophy and music in England. In the 40's and 50's she wrote numerous musical and ethnomusical studies and became in touch with the roman intellectual circle and the future members of the avant-garde movement Gruppo 63.

In the 60's she entered in the Italian Communist Party and wrote on several reviews getting the attention of Andrea Zanzotto, Giovanni Raboni and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In 1964 she published her first book of poems, Variazioni belliche, by Garzanti, and in 1969 Serie ospedaliera, with her famous poem La Libellula. In 1981 she published Impromptu, a long poem after a long period of writer's block. She also wrote poems in french and in english (as her next book, Sleep.

She lived in Rome sharing a house with the poet Dario Bellezza, she died on 11 February 1996 by suicide, the same day of her great ispiration, Sylvia Plath.

Reviews

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"to call to love is but to make the name
of usury! this ever precious stone of your
neck droops too far out of my reach and
your tender hands clasping the broom of
severity do but cut a slice into the heart
of the matter which i hold in own trembling
fingers"
"appellarsi all'amore non è che fare il nome
d'usura! questa pietra eternamente preziosa al tuo
collo cade ben oltre la mia presa e
le tenere tue mani che afferrano la scopa della
severità non fanno che tagliare una fetta nel cuore
delle cose che stringo tra le mie dita
tremanti"

[harlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing unique fascinating language. loved so much of this but unfortunately i am not at all smart enough for it!! will revisit someday

[venuszheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Must I tire my mind out
with absurd tyrannies, when
obviously the seaside roars
to tell far better stories
in a crash of lovingness?”

[Santiago M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her first works do demonstrate incredible juvenile energy, a need to grow and evolve. She began her poetic work writing in English, only finding out afterwards that she could write in Italian. We get a demonstration of her musicality, her dislocated language creating impactful phrases. Like running into a car-crash of the utmost emotionality—how she manages to put these passions into words and situations, I do not know.

[Brenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging poems, definitely worth revisiting.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

ROSSELLI (1928-1996) had an unusually complex background. Her Italian father was an anti-Fascist dissident whom Mussolini had assassinated. Her English mother raised her in England, Switzerland, and the United States. She wrote poetry both in Italian and in English; Sleep gathers much of her poetry in English.

Her poems in both languages are deeply idiosyncratic, full of invented words, logic-defying modifiers, and inside-out syntax: "Preparing the downfall of strips / of teasing talk was the grey upshot of the conversation / which in cannibal laughter demonstrated its impreparation." Her poems sound the way they do partly, perhaps, because she was not fully a native speaker of either Italian or English, but she seems to be using her own dislocation in language as a way of addressing a dislocated reality.

There's a consciousness of tradition, too, as she was a great admirer of Shakespeare's sonnets. A kind of broken-and-reglued Elizabethan idiom crops up in almost every poem:

Of mishap we know but the name, yet
our gentle brook, rook-called, (the giant
trees unfurl their tender light by the night
light of a waning moon) the giant trees
do but unfurl the development of our love,
the brook chants to the rook: --black raven
collapsing into the science of every-day
transport.
As with the Elizabethans, love and madness are frequent themes--but "themes" may be the wrong word to use about these quicksilver poems, which do not want to stay in any one place for very long.

The back of this NYRB Books edition carries a quotation from Pasolini, which surprised me since I had read elsewhere that, though he had been helpful at times, he had serious misgivings about Rosselli's poetry, especially about its experimental and cosmopolitan aspects. In the quotation, he compares Rosselli's poems to "the most terrible laboratory experiments, tumors, atomic blasts" as a way of talking about their "stupendousness." Is there an upside to having your work compared to a tumor?

I found the poems spell-binding, myself, although hard to describe. Every sentence makes sense while you are in the middle of it--it was only later that I went, "wait, what?" If you like immersions in sheer otherness, Rosselli is worth a look.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Middle of the book is my favorite: Sleep - Faro
The rest (Poems Omitted from Sleep 1992 Edition, and the beginning) I don't find particularly exciting, rather I couldn't resonate with them enough to stay interested. Makes me wonder if that's so important for me to enjoy poetry. Feeds into the argument that poetry you don't enjoy is simply poetry you don't understand?
Enjoyed her elusiveness. One of those books I'll keep on the bedside table and flip through for inspiration.

[Sophia Blate · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We have newly learned to sin, to sing that
is, with the hatchet behind our
shoulders but nevertheless we
sing
wildly
before god discovers our disgrace, quick
hidden in the wings of all
falsehood, joy is an everlasting
sorrow.”

As I am committed to being part of biblestudybookclub.org (I love you Orion), I am investing more time into poetry, and Rosselis’ poems are quite great. Happy March.

[savitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

cryptic

[madi ✩ · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty words but what do they mean?

[Jon Conley · Rating 4 out of 5]

yes

[Suzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t understand like half of this but it sounded really beautiful

[Cora Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this collection in a little less than a week and continue to pick it up and reread bookmarked pages. Complex and delicious and too beautiful not to relish

[Sama · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Must I tire my mind out with absurd tyrannies, when obviously the seaside roars to tell far better stories in a crash of lovingness?"

very beautiful will revisit cause i didn’t get some things

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"too strange a coincidence, your hand
on mine." (p. 120)

[Irina]

“Must I tire my mind out
with absurd tyrannies, when
obviously the seaside roars
to tell far better stories
in a crash of lovingness?”