Anonymous Constellation
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Anonymous Constellation, by Alfredo de Palchi, is a book of poems written originally in Italian.
Synopsis
A collection of stark and sometimes brutal poems reflecting on the universality of violence, by the New York Italian poet.
Summary
Alfredo de Palchi is a highly regarded poet living in New York. Writing in his native Italian, he has been translated into crisp and vibrant English by his longtime friend, the late poetess Sonia Raiziss. She once said of his work: "His words are instigated by the pure push of an underground, undersea gush, rising to a shout or curse and then collapsing, often abruptly."
The celebrated poet James Dickey found that "Alfredo de Palchi is both tough and imaginative. He is absolutely uncompromising, and his poems are painful and exalting to read. One does not come away from his stark and terrible and hilarious work un-touched."
Len Roberts, another noted poet, compares de Palchi with the masters: "Such precise, unadorned poetic phrasings rank with the best of Lorca's and Radnoti's poems, and they have the same strengths of personal, original poetic statement that many of the contemporary Eastern Europeans presently being translated have."
De Palchi's first cycle of poems was The Scorpion's Dark Dance, written in an Italian prison after World War II (published by Xenos Books). His second cycle was Sessions with My Analyst, published in 1970 by October House (London) in translation by I .L. Salomon. The third is Anonymous Constellation, again translated by Raiziss. It covers his American experience from 1956 to 1980.
Professor Alessandro Vettori of the University of Virginia notes in the Introduction that "While his previous poetic works — The Scorpion's Dark Dance and Sessions with My Analyst — reflected on his wartime experience of incarceration and its psychological aftermath, this new collection offers a wider scope for thoughts on human existence in general." He sees them as "an organic creation, to be read almost in a single breath."
Vettori further observes that "Anonymous Constellation follows an evolutionary pattern: it starts with iconic reflections on primordial cosmic life, proceeds to meditations on human history and ends with statements about the poet himself. Evolution is thus both a theme and a structural element of the collection." But with characteristic originality, de Palchi defies the idea of evolutionary progress, asserting instead that "violence levels all creatures and brings them back to their primeval state." The cycle of poems thus presents a view of history turned upside down: history does not instruct, does not help, but only repeats the great struggle, pitting human beings against other human beings, human beings against animals, animals against other animals.
Editions
- Translated from Italian by Sonia Raiziss. Grand Terrace, CA: Xenos Books. ISBN 1-879378-23-X (paper), ISBN 1-879378-24-8 (hardcover), 96 p.