Poet
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Valerio Magrelli 1957-... country: Italy language: Italian |
Publications (selection): Ora serrata reinae (1980); Nature e venature (1987); Nearsights (1991, English); Esercizi di tiptologia (1992); Didascalie per la lettura di un giornale (1999). (1957) was born, and still lives, in Rome. He teaches French literature at the University of Pisa. He has published translations of and critical studies on French literature, including one on Dada. He writes columns for the Roman daily Il messagero. He made an early début with the collection Ora serrata retinae (1980). His early poems are strongly visual in character, as if written by a near-sighted man who turns his liability into an asset. The least obvious relationships between things as a rule reveal themselves to us in the moments before sleep. In his later collections Nature e venature (1987) and Esercizi di tiptologia (1992), which includes prose pieces and translations, there is still a looking for verbal insights, but the angle of view has widened, now encompassing experiences such as a trip to Germany, and clearing the way for more long-winded poems. When in 1996 Magrelli had the good fortune of having his three collections reprinted in a single volume by his publisher Einaudi (Poesia 1980-1992), the critics’s response was mild disbelief: so young, and already collected works? Magrelli soon proved them wrong. In 1999 he published his cycle Didascalie per la lettura di un giornale (Captions for reading a newspaper) – a translatable title this time. In these poems everyday life, promoted/degraded to text, is put under a magnifying glass. |
