KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2018 \u2013 Associate Professor of English Peter Covino\u2019s four-year odyssey to bring the works of acclaimed Italian poet Dario Bellezza to an English-speaking audience has received a boost from the National Endowment for the Arts.<\/p>\n
Covino, an awarding-winning poet himself, has been awarded a Literature Translation Fellowship from the NEA, one of 25 projects this year to receive a total of $325,000 in grants to translate works from 17 countries.<\/p>\n
The Providence<\/strong> resident, the first to translate a majority of Bellezza\u2019s body of poetry, earned the grant for his manuscript, \u201cWhat Sex is Death?,\u201d a translation of about 100 poems, some quite long, that provide an overview of Bellezza\u2019s career \u2013 along with the first English translations of all of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he was an amazing poet,\u201d said Covino, who had previously translated about 30 of Bellezza\u2019s poems for anthologies and literary journals. \u201cBut people were a little afraid of his work. He had become a persona non grata in Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n Bellezza (1944-1996), a poet, novelist and playwright, was outspokenly gay and his poetry reflected that, along with attacks on societal norms and explorations of relationships, complex ideas about death, and spirituality. He reached the pinnacle of Italian poetry in 1976, winning the Viareggio Prize for his collection \u201cMorte Segreta\u201d (Secret Death). His work drew the attention of such Italian literati as renowned poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose murder in 1975 became a major influence on Bellezza\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Covino became interested in Bellezza\u2019s work in the 1980s while studying in Rome. Covino\u2019s poetry teacher, novelist and poet Giorgio Bassani, had known Pasolini. He urged Covino to read Bellezza\u2019s \u201cLibro d\u2019Amore\u201d (Lovebook or Book of Love).<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing Bassani taught me is that when you are marginalized, when you\u2019re an \u2018other,\u2019 all kinds of marginalization have similar experience,\u201d Covino said. \u201cHe really turned me on to this idea of understanding the radical possibility of poetry to express this type of alienation.\u201d<\/p>\n In the \u201880s, Bellezza\u2019s poetry was still prominent in Italy, and \u201cLibro d\u2019amore\u201d was one of the first books Covino read in Italian. \u201cFor me, it was my own initial struggle with feelings of identity,\u201d said Covino. \u201cPoetry was a nonthreatening way to express that.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time Covino began more intensive work on \u201cWhat Sex is Death?\u201d in 2014, however, he faced a big hurdle. Just about all of Bellezza\u2019s work was largely out of print.<\/p>\n \u201cBellezza went from being a major literary figure in the 1970s to becoming more or less vilified by the right in the \u201880s,\u201d said Covino. \u201cIt was hard to find anything on Bellezza or his work for lots of complicated reasons. Gay identity was still emerging from the shadows. A lot of people weren\u2019t open to it. The AIDS epidemic also hit in the \u201880s and that marginalized gay people even more.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until 2015 that Italian publishing house Mondadori produced a comprehensive collection of Bellezza\u2019s poems. But for much of his research, Covino pored over obscure Italian journals and bibliographic material and traveled to libraries in Rome and Florence to track down remaining copies.<\/p>\n Covino initially planned to translate one of Bellezza\u2019s eight poetry books, or parts of one. But after reading all eight \u2013 about 800 pages of poetry \u2013 he decided to produce a collection that would provide an appreciation of Bellezza\u2019s full career. \u201cI\u2019ve translated maybe double the amount that will fit in a book,\u201d Covino said. \u201cSome of them are really just beautiful, candid and gorgeous. And then others are really intense.\u201d<\/p>\n Covino, whose translations of other Italian poets have been featured in such publications as Atlanta Review, Italian Americana and the anthology New European Poets, had to ensure that his English translations matched the intensity of Bellezza\u2019s Italian verse. But Bellezza\u2019s style varied wildly.<\/p>\n \u201cHe uses a lot of ornate and baroque language alongside very direct, matter-of-fact language in discussing issues of sexual identity and socio-political realities of the era,\u201d Covino said. \u201cThat\u2019s very challenging to translate. You don\u2019t want it to be too ornate, or too direct and omit important resonances. You have to find a happy medium.\u201d<\/p>\n Covino has selected 100 poems, approximately 150 pages for the book \u2013 currently about 320 manuscript pages, that include a comprehensive introduction and poems presented in their original Italian and English translation. The manuscript has received interest from several publishers.<\/p>\n Covino, author of three award-winning books of poetry, is also working on a new collection, \u201cArmies in the Blood.\u201d<\/p>\n The NEA project has awarded 480 fellowships since 1981, funding the translation of works from 83 countries. The 25 awards this year were selected from 104 applicants, with consideration given to the translator\u2019s skill and the importance of the proposed work to English-speaking audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2018 \u2013 Associate Professor of English Peter Covino\u2019s four-year odyssey to bring the works of acclaimed Italian poet Dario Bellezza to an English-speaking audience has received a boost from the National Endowment for the Arts. Covino, an awarding-winning poet himself, has been awarded a Literature Translation Fellowship from the NEA, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-74317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}