Poetic Notebook 1974-1977

Poetic Notebook 1974-1977 evokes a magnificent savagery, an attack on the poet himself and on the nihilistic squalor that he observes around him. An old man, Montale remembers his youth and recalls the dead. At times he seems to wonder if he himself is dead. And so his is a grim majesty, a new kind of poetry that faces the void: "She's lied too often, now let darkness, / void, nothingness fall on her page. / Rely on this, my scribbling friend: / Trust the darkness when the light lies."

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975. In addition to his poetry, he was also the author of many works of nonfiction and a translator of authors including Shakespeare, Herman Melville, and T. S. Eliot. William Aprowsmith (1924-1992) was a renowned classicist, translator, and critic who also translated works by Euripides, Aristophanes, and Cesare Pavese. Rosanna Warren is the author of five books of poetry as well as works of criticism and translation. She teaches at Boston University and lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.