The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a discussion and workshop with the poet Pietro Federico, author of La Maggioranza Delle Stelle (Edizioni Ensemble, 2020).
This collection of poems has recently been published in English by St. Augustine's Press with the title, Most of the Stars, and many of these translations have already featured in several of the best American literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Hopkins Review, Denver Quarterly, Gradiva, Literary Matters, Journal of Italian Translation, Exchanges, Rattle, Azonal, On the Seawall, and other magazines.
The muse of Most of the Stars is the United States of America, her people and landscapes. In fifty poems (one for each state), Federico plumbs the depths of the historic, geographic, political, emotional, psychological, and metaphysical realms through a variety of voices. This book is unlike any other collection of poems. Federico is fascinated by the American spirit, to use the words of Giancarlo Pontiggia, "an America made up of stories as raw, rough, endless and inconclusive as the immense landscapes in which they took place." In Most of the Stars the linguistic power of the Italian literary tradition and the contemporary vernacular combine to articulate an idiosyncratic understanding of the New World—the breadth of its cities, its towns, its frontiers and interiors. Federico’s deeply spiritual understanding of our own American personalities and histories offers us a gift of literary genius and beautiful objectivity.
The workshop and discussion with Pietro will be followed by refreshments and a reception at the Romance Languages and Literatures common area in Decio Faculty Hall.
Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.