A remarkable gathering of poets who have taken on the complexities of Montale's poetry in that always "impossible" task of carrying the music and meaning of verse from one language to another. Editor Harry Thomas's analysis of different translations of "Verso Vienna" is nothing short of stunning: it gives us a window onto the infinite challenges, choices, and intuitions that make up the task of the translator. The versions of poems that span Montale's entire production, rendered into English by well-known and lesser-known English, Scottish, American, Australian, and Italian poets turned translators, provide genuine access to one of the great voices of modernism, while giving us a renewed sense of the beauties of the English language. An admirable volume to be savored over and over by all lovers of poetry. --Rebecca West.

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets selection of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Italian poet Eugenio Montale, one of the giants of twentieth-century poetry. Eugenio Montale (1896–1981) is not only Italy’s greatest modern poet but a towering figure in twentieth-century literature. His incandescently beautiful body of work is deeply rooted in the venerable lyric tradition that began with Dante, but he brilliantly reinvents that tradition for our time, probing the depths of love, death, faith, and philosophy in the bracing light of modern history. Dynamic innovation and a coiled, fierce energy fuel the poet’s quest for liberation from the self. Marked by musicality and rhythmic variety, Montale’s poems manage to be buoyant with allusion and metaphor while also densely studded with things—with concrete, elemental images that keep his complex and restless musings firmly tethered to the world. Montale’s reputation is international and enduring; his widely translated work has profoundly influenced generations of poets around the world. This volume contains selections from all his greatest works, rendered into English by the accomplished poet and translator Jonathan Galassi. It serves as both an essential introduction to an important poet and a true pleasure for lovers of contemporary

"Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) is best known for the intense lyrical vision of his first three collections of poetry, written between the 1920s and early 1950s. With the publication of ""Satura"" in 1971, the profile of his work changes irrevocably as a new disillusioned voice emerged, commenting ironically on post-war Italian society and debunking his own previous poetic myths. O'Ceallachin, while placing this body of work firmly in its historical and ideological context, explores the poetic texts in detail, approaching the work from a variety of interpretative and thematic angles, and constructing a comprehensive reading of Montale's later work."

Eugenio Montale's epoch-making first book, Cuttlefish Bones (1925), has been hailed as one of the truly important works of poetry in the twentieth century. At once an earned poetic manifesto and spiritual autobiography, its dialogue between self and others, hope and despair, is sustained with absolute musical mastery and that simplicity-in-complexity that marks only the greatest poetry. -- W.W. Norton & Company.

Winner of the PEN Translation Prize, these translations by noted American poet Charles Wright bring one of the major collections of poetry in this century to English-speaking authors. Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale considered La Bufera e Altro (The Storm and Other Poems) his best book.

Focusing on the most recent triad of Italian poetic genius—Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and Eugenio Montale—Joseph Cary not only presents striking biographical portraits as he facilitates our understanding of their poetry; he also guides us through the first few decades of twentieth-century Italy, a most difficult period in its literary and cultural development.