Milo De Angelis (Italy)
1951
Milo
De Angelis was born in Milan on June 6, 1951. He spent his childhood in
Monferrato, a village in the Piedmont. The childhood experiences of this rural
setting, the agrarian practices, the proximity of nature, the provincial
legends, would later prove formative to his poetry, reinforcing a central
thematic preoccupation with the natural cycle as well as contributing a number
of autobiographical allusions.
During his late teens, De Angelis became
deeply involved in sports, initially soccer, later track and field. These
experiences would also reemerge in his poetry as a pattern of athletic images
that resonate with his philosophical speculations.
He studied at the University of Milan from
1970-1974 and then at the University of Montpellier from 1975 to 1976,
receiving a degree in contemporary Italian literature and classical philology.
De Angelis began writing poetry at an
early age, in his mid-teens, when he was also beginning his readings in
literature, philosophy, and literary criticism. His precocious debut occurred
in 1975, when some of his poems appeared in two anthologies important in the
history of contemporary Italian poetry: the prestigious annual L'almanacco
dello Specchio (The Almanack of the Mirror), which usually prints a few
interesting newcomers along with recent work by respected major writers; and Il
pubblico della poesia (The Audience of Poetry), a selection of twenty-five
poets designed to characterize the social and cultural situation of Italian
poetry in the 1970s.
In 1976, De Angelis published his first
collection of poems, Somiglianze (Resemblances) with the smaller press
Guanda, noted for its list of experimental writing. These first publications
signaled his emergence as a key figure in post-World War II Italian poetry, one
who was developing in new ways the experimentalism initiated by such groups as
the Novissimi and Gruppo 63 in the 1950s and 1960s.
De Angelis's poetry shows a commitment to
the formal innovation championed by this experimentalist movement, but in the
service of speculation on the nature of language and human subjectivity influenced
by figures such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot, Lacan and Deluze.
The result, in the words of the poet and critic Maurizio Cucchi, is that
"idea and freedom of image often coexist in his verses, revealing a
subtending, insinuating uneasiness, an always arduous and troubling skewing of
experience."
De Angelis's poetic research let him in
the late 1970s to found the journal Il niebo (1976-80), which published
translations of several philosophical and speculative texts. De Angelis's own
essays, collected in 1982 as Poesia e destina, addressed a wide range of
texts, European and Eastern, classical and modern.
Throughout the 1980s, he lived in Milan,
tutoring private students in Greek and Latin literature while writing the poems
that brilliantly confirmed his early promise. His second collection, Millimetri
(Millimeters) appeared in 1983 from the noted publishing house Einaudi; his
third, Terro del viso (Land of the Face) in 1985, and his fourth Distante
un padre (A Distant Father) in 1989, both from Mondadori. In 1998 Mondadori
also published his Biografia sommaria (Concise Biography). The Rome
publisher, Donzelli, published a selection of his work, Dove eravamo già
stati. Poesie 1970-2001 (Where We Had Already Been) in 2001. His most
recent collection, Tema dell'addio (Farewell Theme) won several prizes,
including the Viareggio Prize, the San Pellegrino Prize, and the Cattafi Prize.
De Angelis has also written a work a
fiction, La corsa dei mantelli (1979).
He and his wife, the poet Giovanna Sicari,
currently live in Rome.
—Lawrence
Venuti with Douglas Messerli
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Somiglianze (Parma: Guanda,
1975, new ed. 1990); Millimetri (Torino: Einaudi, 1983); Terra del
viso (Milano: Mondadori, 1985); Distante un padre (Milano:
Mondadori, 1989); Biografia sommaria (Milano: Mondadori, 1998); Dove
eravamo già stati. Poesie 1970-2001 (Roma: Donzelli, 2001); Tema
dell'addio (Milano: Mondadori, 2005)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Finite
Intuition: Selected Poetry and Prose, trans. by Lawrence Venuti (Los Angeles:
Sun & Moon Press, 1995); Between the Blast Furnaces and the Dizziness: A
Selection of Poems 1970-1999, trans. by Emanuel Di Pasquale (New York:
Chelsea Editions, 2003); Theme of Farewell and After-Poems: A Bilingual
Edition, trans. by Susan Stewart and Patrizio Ceccagnoli (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2013).
Now
This
desired caress, stopped
close
by, will not reach the cheek, gossip
that
holds no truth: better
the
Nazi gesture that crushes his mind, mine.
Not
comprehended
it
will comprehend everything
with
the struggle in the room, the imploring
look
and then:
listen
to me
it
helps. The day escaped into the day after
to
forget. Now
in
a few awkward tears
it
is put before you: you are contemporary.
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Somiglianze, 1975)
Metaphors
The
same low sky
of
ambulances and rain, in the excitement
and
hands on the groin, summoned by the body
to
oppose
the
slightest numbness to things
while
outside, among the traffic lights, Europe
having
invented the finite
holds
out
far
from the beast, defends
real
and irrelevant concepts
along
the highways, in linear time
toward
a point
and
the eyes don't shut before things, steady
where
today a millennium hesitated
between
yielding and not yielding
losing
itself always later, with intelligence.
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Somiglianze, 1975)
The
Dream of the Dancing Cat
For
the lady of sea and grain
roads
without
beginnings, bright clothes, leavened break
because
she spoke
as
if she never existed,
in
the plain
of
light or in the threatening hiss
of
the reeds, spoke
without
need of guarantees,
swift
shadow on the horse
heading
south, beyond the forest, tonight
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Somiglianze, 1975)
Born
on the earth
Born
on the earth
that
remains
we
were that breathless rejoicing
as
soon as the minds arrived
on
a canary's back
and
conquered. A
matron-at-arms
is
screwed to our flank, guardian
of
the tablets, a harpoon
in
the Mediterranean world, among the eggs.
You
didn't want to share
the
plunder and so
you
have me forever
because
there was nothing else
but
the mere victory. Later
we
shall throw our prey
to
the cats: they will know
how
to annihilate it!
Here
is the quartz page
in
the agenda, when
every
man is razed to the ground
and
remembers. The pine cones fill
this
courtyard
faithful
to its meters: the very tree
of
the door
that
is perennial for anyone who notices it
and
yet is air, only air. It has a severity
and
a still attentive custodian. These
were
the numbers.
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Millimetri, 1983)
Conversation
with Father
I
The
prisoners, you said, found
an
opening in the cell. Several
died
frostbitten, in the night.
Others,
however, by burning their clothes,
saved
themselves. But why was the guard
silent?
Is it true he shot only at the dead?
II
The
bandage was riddle with holes
but
it didn't fall from his eyes. The blinds
were
nearly closed...I'm certain...they were nearly closed
and
no one can forgive them
not
even now, among the other windows,
parcels
from the post office. This truck. Now
it's
dark. It was
as
if he heard
a
sister devoured, before him, lead
and
light...I think so...she was watching,
she
was strange...German.
The
clock was stolen, at once, and then
filth
on top of filth, cats
pelted
with stones,
they
too, like an anecdote of the crowd.
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Terra del viso, 1985)
Finite
Intuition
A
nerve pivots and that space
seeks
a scratch in the glue,
point
outside page
"Where's
the
earth you send spinning?"
I
shall carry you on my shoulders,
complete
cremation surrounded by posts:
suicides
are more secretive than angels
and
from the darkless side
the
stitched nape will begin
the
beginning
I
shall carry you on my shoulders, in tatters, to
read,
beyond the wall, beyond those
"The
body was frost-bitten,
purple,
devoid of essence."
—Translated
from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti
(from
Distante un padre, 1989)
____
"Now,"
"Metaphors," "The Dream of the Dancing Cat," "Born on
the earth," "Conversation with Father," and "Finite
Intuition"
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