PATRIZIA CAVALLI: "MY POEMS WON'T CHANGE THE WORLD"

On the occasion of the release of My Poems Won’t Change the World, published this fall by Farrar Straus amp; Giroux, meet Patrizia Cavalli, beloved Italian author, said to have written “the most intensely ‘ethical’ poetry in Italian literature of the twentieth century.” With the participation of Gini Alhadeff, translator. About My PoemsWon't Change the World: spanning her career from 1974 to 2006, My Poems Won’t Change the World features new translations by an illustrious group of American poets: Mark Strand, Jorie Graham, Jonathan Galassi, Rosanna Warren, Geoffrey Brock, J. D. McClatchy, and David Shapiro. Gini Alhadeff’s compilation and translations are the result of a five-year collaboration with Patrizia Cavalli. Patrizia Cavalli is an Italian poet born in Todi in 1947 who studied philosophy. Her first collection of poems: “Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo” (My Poems Will Not Change the World), was published in 1974. Cavalli dedicated her poems to the famous Italian novelist Elsa Morante. Among her works: “Il cielo (The Sky)” (1981), “Poesie 1974 – 1992 (Poems from 1974-1992)” (1992), “L’io singolare proprio mio (My Own Single Myself)” (1999) and “Con Sempre Aperto Teatro (With the Theatre Always Open)” (1999), with which she won the Viareggio-Repaci Prize. In 2005 she published the poem “La guardiana (The Guardian)”. Her recent collection, “Pigre Divinita’ e Pigra Sorte” (Lazy Deities and Lazy Fate) (2006) was awarded the Pier Paolo Pasolini international prize for poetry.