Sentry Towers

by Maria Luisa Spaziani

Sentry Towers is a welcome addition to the English translations of Maria Luisa Spaziani's poetry. Rich and sensuous in language and imagery, this poetry is a strong celebration of desire and memory, and articulates a powerful woman's voice within the symbolist and hermetic tradition" -Gian-Paolo Biasin, University of California, Berkeley. Translated from the Italian by Laura Stortoni.

Genres: Poetry

116 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

Maria Luisa Spaziani (21 June 1923 – 30 June 2014) was an Italian poet.

Spaziani was born in Turin. At nineteen, she founded the review Il dado, working with collaborators such as Vasco Pratolini, Sandro Penna, and Vincenzo Ciaffi. Virginia Woolf sent her a chapter of her novel The Waves, autographed to Alla piccola direttrice (To the young editor). Spaziani did not contribute her own poems, however, feeling that they were not of sufficient quality.

In the 1950s Spaziani became involved with the poet Eugenio Montale (1896–1981). Montale encouraged Spaziani to write poetry, and was a significant influence in her early style. Maria Luisa Spaziani's first book of poetry, Le acque del sabato, appeared in 1954. Montale drew upon his affair with her in creating the character of la Volpe ("the Fox") in his work La bufera e altro (1956). Montale's poem "Da un lago svizzero" is an acrostic forming her name, Maria Luisa Spaziani. (Spaziani eventually published her correspondence with Montale, some eight hundred letters, in 1995.)

After travelling extensively in the late 50's and early 60's, in countries including England, Belgium, Greece, France, and the Soviet Union, Spaziani chose to settle in Rome. Starting from 1964 she has taught French language and literature at the University of Messina. She published extensively, as a poet, translator, and scholar.

Spaziani was nominated thrice for the Nobel Prize for Literature; 1990, 1992 and 1997. Her poetry combines a vivid and immediate sense of the natural world with a rich appreciation of literary culture and tradition. Though echoes of past poets appear in her work, Spaziani's voice is clearly her own, sensitive and controlled.

Spaziani was the president of the Centro internazionale Eugenio Montale, which confers the Premio Montale, a literary prize for translations and publications of Italian verse.

Spaziani died on 30 June 2014 at the age of 91.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I

To love you is only to intuit your distance.
To discover the luxury transpiring
-unbearable-through a naked line.

II

Thus I respond to great distances,
vibrating here with black on white,
thus I melt into the events you do not mention
flowing boats on the waves of your name.

I respond to mysterious distances
like the high tide every time
silently responds to the moon.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contents -

Biographical data
Introduction
Translator's notes
Spaziani's message to the reader

Sentry Towers (dual Italian & English text)

Notes to the poems
Bibliography


One of my fave poems -

LIGURIAN APENNINE

I came to burn amidst your black branches,
O my brackish village of snow,
in you I am reborn like a bird of miracle
in forgotten silences.

There was time of truces and bells,
of red blood, nectar and thorn-bushes.
Alive I descend into the fabled well.
Have pity on me, slippery walls.

You give yourself in flashes, I know it well,
like every cruel Absolute.
But in one drop whole worlds rotate,
even the sun is a blind pupil—

There was a time of brawls and bells,
of buds, and of green prophets.
I live in space if space surrenders.
The bell gives rhythm to my every elsewhere.

[Caroline]

Too hermetic for me