KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Feb. 26, 2024 \u2013 In the 1980s, as a poetry student in Italy, Peter Covino was introduced to the work of acclaimed Italian poet Dario Bellezza. It\u2019s a moment he still remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a big deal to learn at that time that there was this really wild, irreverent writer exploring ideas that I didn\u2019t realize would speak to me so directly,\u201d says Covino, associate professor of English at the 溏心vlog免费B站. \u201cIt was a mystery to discover somebody who wrote so openly about being gay in such a passionate and sustained way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Forty years later, Covino is on the verge of seeing his decade-long odyssey of translating Bellezza\u2019s poetry come to fruition. Covino was recently selected winner of the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, which includes a $1,500 award and publication of his collection, \u201cWhat Sex Is Death: Selected Poems of Dario Bellezza,\u201d in October by the University of Wisconsin Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to get this award,\u201d says Covino, the first to translate a full-length collection of Bellezza\u2019s poetry into English. \u201cI\u2019m thrilled that such a progressive and open-minded press like the University of Wisconsin will publish this book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bellezza, who died in 1996 at the age of 51 from AIDS-related complications, is an award-winning author of eight full-length poetry collections. He was outspokenly gay and his work reflected that, openly discussing sexuality while confronting homophobia and the AIDS epidemic. His second collection, \u201cMorte Segreta\u201d or \u201cSecret Death\u201d\u2014released a few months after the murder of his mentor, poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini\u2014captured the Viareggio Prize, Italy\u2019s premier award for poetry. But he went from being a major literary figure in the 1970s to being a persona non grata by the late \u201880s, says Covino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHis poems are beautiful and subtle but rich with tension and outrage,\u201d says Covino. \u201cYou can argue that he\u2019s one of the most important voices in poetry of the late 20th<\/sup> century\u2014certainly in Italy. He was later ignored because of homophobia, but also because his work is hard to integrate. It\u2019s very polemical and it\u2019s laced with invective. He never backed down from this direct intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since being introduced to Bellezza\u2019s work in the early 1980s by his teacher, noted novelist and poet Giorgio Bassani, Covino has found more than an appreciation of Bellezza\u2019s poetry. He has found a personal connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before entering academia, Covino worked for 14 years in foster care and AIDS services, earning a master\u2019s degree in social work from Columbia University in 1991. Part of that time, he worked in hospice care in Jersey City, New Jersey, helping AIDS patients and seeing some people die in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was getting politicized. I was really learning a lot about AIDS and social service activism,\u201d says Covino. \u201cThen you read Bellezza\u2019s poems and they\u2019re a call to arms. They\u2019re often visceral. Some of them are understandably angry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Covino and Bellezza also share the experience of being immigrants fleeing southern Italy to escape poverty\u2014Covino emigrating to Glen Cove, Long Island, with his family in the late 1960s, and Bellezza\u2019s mother had also left southern Italy for Rome in search of economic opportunity. The 1970s marked the end of a 100-year period that saw more than 28 million people\u2014nearly half of the country\u2019s population\u2014emigrate, most of them from southern Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese migrations truly uproot reality because you\u2019re leaving your town or your country, and diverse customs. Bellezza\u2019s mother was from a city in southern Italy, not far from where I was born,\u201d Covino says. \u201cFor me, there was always a personal connection to his work because he writes a lot of poems about southern Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Covino\u2019s collection\u2014the first major translation of Bellezza\u2019s poetry from Italian into English\u2014includes translations of about 70 poems and an introduction by Covino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Covino started the translations for \u201cWhat Sex Is Death\u201d in earnest in 2013. With Bellezza\u2019s poetry collections out of print, he had to search library archives. The COVID-19 pandemic also slowed his progress, preventing him from conducting research in Italy for about four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while the book was delayed, he says he thinks the timing is right for publication. There is a renewed interest in Bellezza\u2019s work, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve really loved working on this project. It\u2019s been a journey, during which time my own parents died. So working on Bellezza\u2019s work kept me alive to my mother tongue,\u201d says Covino. \u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity for people to discover his work and for me to help shepherd some of this work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Covino\u2019s work on \u201cWhat Sex Is Death\u201d has been supported by numerous fellowships and grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts; Richmond American International University of London, Rome Programme; the American Academy in Rome, and 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Department of Humanities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Feb. 26, 2024 \u2013 In the 1980s, as a poetry student in Italy, Peter Covino was introduced to the work of acclaimed Italian poet Dario Bellezza. 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