Sleep

A major, career-spanning collection of an Italian master's poetry in English, gathered together for the first time.

Amelia Rosselli is one of the great poets of postwar Italy, and recognized as such throughout Europe. She was also a musician and musicologist, close to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and she waged a lifelong battle against depression. The child of Carlo Rosselli, a major figure in the resistance to Mussolini who was assassinated with his brother Nello in 1937, Rosselli grew up in exile and went to high school in Scarsdale, making her fluent in English. English poetry, especially the lyrics and sonnets of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, became a prime reference for her own poetry, which mingles formal experimentation with memories of traditional forms to evoke the struggles of an embattled conscience.

Rosselli's English poems, some of which were published by John Ashbery in the 1960s, are a major part of her body of work and are invariably included in Italian editions of her collected works. Sleep, the title under which Rosselli herself gathered these poems, is the first publication of her haunting and utterly original English oeuvre by an English publisher.

Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996) was a poet, translator, musician, and musicologist, born in Paris to refugees from Italy. After World War II, she settled in Rome and emerged as one of the most powerful voices in postwar Italian literature. Her eight volumes of poetry probed the traumas of the 20th century—for Rosselli both personal and historical.

Barry Schwabsky is the art critic for The Nation and regular contributor to Artforum, where he is also an editor. His most recent books include the poetry collection Trembling Hand Equilibrium and Heretics of Language, a collection of literary criticism. He lives in New York City.