“At the International Exchange for Poetic Invention, Linh Dinh has been posting a series of translations of contemporary Italian poets. Thus far: Marco Giovenale, Gherardo Bortolotti, Marina Pizzi, and Vanni Santoni. There’s also an interview with Bortolotti: in Italian bookstores one can find a huge selection of mainstream American fiction (and even some underground fiction) but almost nothing of American poetry, especially from the last 50 years. One can find Bukowski, as you pointed out, and one can find a translation of the old New American Poetry anthology, edited by Allen, a few moderns (Pound, above all, some Stein but absolutely no Zukofsky), something by Ashbery but, in light of the frenetic volume of poetry generated by the United States, one could say that there’s almost nothing available in Italy. To cite one example, I can tell you that even a movement as important as Language Poetry is practically unknown in Italy, even among specialists.”
Jason B. Jones