The College of Humanities and Department of French & Italian present a discussion on the making of a new anthology of modern Italian poetry and a dual-language reading of selected poems.

The reading and discussion will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at the UA Poetry Center.

Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies is an anthology of poems and essays that aims to provide an organic profile of the evolution of Italian poetry after World War II.

Giuseppe Cavatorta, UA Associate Professor Italian, and Luigi Ballerini, Professor Emeritus of Italian at UCLA, edited the 2,116-page anthology, published in 2017 by the University of Toronto Press. Beginning with the birth of Officina and Il Verri, and culminating with the crisis of the mid-1970s, the tome features works by such poets as Pasolini, Pagliarani, Rosselli, Sanguineti and Zanzotto, as well as such forerunners as Villa and Cacciatore.

Cavatorta will talk about the making of the anthology and the structure. Ballerini will address reasoning behind the choices, including why certain poets were selected and not others. Faculty from Creative Writing will discuss poetry, poetics, and translation in a general sense, and specifically in the case of the anthology. 

Included in the volume are 24 images by visual poet Magdalo Mussio, which will be displayed and discussed. The event will conclude with a dual-language poetry reading of selections from the anthology.

The event is co-sponsored by the UA Departments of English and German Studies, the UA Confluencecenter for Creative Inquiry, and the Gamma Kappa Alpha National Italian Honor Society.