Alfredo Giuliani (Italy) 1924-2007

Alfredo Giuliani (Italy)

1924-2007

 

Alfredo Giuliani was born in Pesaro in 1924 and lives in Rome. He holds a degree in philosophy from the University of Rome and currently teaches Italian literature at the University of Chieti.

    In addition to being the poetry editor of Il Verri between 1957-1961 and the director of the bimonthly Quindici from 1967-1969, he is a regular contributor to the literary pages of the daily La Republica.

     Guiliani edited the important anthology of Italian poetry, I Novissimi, in 1961, containing the poetry of his friends, Elio Pagliarani, Edoardo Sanguineti, Nanni Balestrini, Antonio Porta, and his own work.   

     Among his published volumes are: Il cuore zoppo (1955), Povera Juliet e altre poesie (1965), Il tautofono (1969), Chi l'avrebbe mai detto (1973), Autunno del novecento (1984), Versi e non versi (1986) and Ebbrezza di placamenti (1993), and two collections of critical essays, Immagini e maniere (1965) and Le droghe di Marsiglia (1977).   

    Giuliani wrote works for theater and the long fiction, Il giovane Max (1972).

    Giuliani has translated work by such modern writers as Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, William Empson and James Joyce, as well as Ben Jonson and Shakespeare.

 

BOOKS OF POETRY

 

Il cuore zoppo (1955); Pelle d'asino (Milano: All'insegna del pesce d'oro, 1964); Povera juliet: e altre poesie (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1965); Il tautofono, 1966-1969 (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1969); Chi l'avrebbe detto (Torino: Einaudi, 1973); Versi e non versi (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1986); Ebbrezza di placamenti (Lece: Piero Manni, 1994); Poetrix Bazaar (Napoli: Pironti, 2003); Furia serena. Opere sceite (Verona: Anterem, 2004)

 

BOOKS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION:

 

selections in I Novissimi (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1995); selections in I Novissimi, ed. by Luigi Ballerini and Federica Santini (New York: Agincourt Press, 2017)

 

You can watch the Poetry war: Alfredo Giuliani vs. Ariodante Marianni at this link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6it6staOpLo

 

 

Chomsky Poem

 

Sentences (1) and (2) are equally nonsensical, but any English speaker will recognize that only (1) is grammatical: (1) colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (2) furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures

 

colorless green ideas sleep furiously

furiously sleep green colorless ideas

colorless sleep furiously green ideas

furiously sleep ideas green colorless

 

let's suppose that the world were not a beautiful green

or without by blazing clouds snows raining sulphurous

swift inconceivably glaring winds

in dark sleep in torrents streak colorless

that the purple trace sleep solar sensation

 

world is masturbation of a god furiously

green crocodiles never laugh without green ideas

of scales and teeth pianos without die

color poets imitate delirious they say of shade

furiously the dog laughs the cat cats the dog

 

green ideas in the dark sleet sleep swiftly

raining off the solar wind my furiously

colorless green idea of her stay in the shade

furiously ideas sleep green colorless

 

furiously ideas sleep green colorless

of her frozen may the world be she beautiful as stone

daybreak in the great circle of shade bursts into flames

furiously blazing green with no color at all

 

if the green idea sleeps that without is in the same

stone as you in the leap of shade stays furiously

bird hanging sounds garland of gentle green

dog waiting for ball at the bounce cats the dog

furiously colorless my idea to stay

 

ignoring one another cat dog blackbird in the same green

without animated this cosmos is living parts of shade

I didn't see her green or longed for dead color

vomited soil idea earthworms undergreen

of her furiously sleeps idea green colorless

 

green lizards don't scurry without green stone I glare

you occult fear reeking of shade in the circle of air

grey burden valediction of every green blade an animal

furiously sleep green colorless ideas

 

furiously green sleep colorless ideas

between pinking beaked claws furiously the lawn

sleeps of the green outside winged body of water stone

melted sex of he who dies staying in shade something

when colorless is all the grass that hems me

in the liquid green without and so much living so little

furiously sleep green ideas with no color at all

 

-Translated from the Italian by Michael Moore

 

(from Versi e non versi, 1986)