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The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961-1992

Adriano Spatola

Translated from the Italian by Paul Vangelisti, Edited with an Afterword by Beppe Cavatorta

A Bilingual Edition

Out of Stock

One of the most important poets of the Italian neo-avant-gardes, Adriano Spatola and his poetic oeuvre has remained in only small and often out of print editions both in Italy and in English language translation, a situation which, as critic Beppe Cavatorta notes, resulted from Spatola's "uncompromising belief in his own poetic project and of being a true 'renaissance poet,' one extremely difficult to label: a visual poet, a sound poet, a concrete poet, a linear poet, editor of innovative magazines, a refined critic and translator, organizer of historical poetry happenings... and founder of his 'republics of poetry.'"

Now twenty years after Spatola's death, noted translator Paul Vangelisti has gathered all of Spatola's poetry—with the exception of the very first chapbook, in which his "impetus toward neo-avant-garde experimentation... had not yet been metabolized"—in one volume, rethinking and retranslating most of the previously published translations. This new Green Integer volume, collecting 67 of Spatola's poems as represented in seven of his books and three previously uncollected works, brilliantly reveals not only the poet's great talent as a writer but his social sensibility, his aesthetic and political engagement in the surrounding world.