Selected Poems and Translations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Selected Poems and Translations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

For critics like John Ruskin and Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1892) was one of the great creative figures of the day, a painter and a poet of major stature. Yeats and the young Pound regarded him as an exemplary figure of solitary dedication to art and beauty.
Rossetti's most original work may have been in preparing the way for the modernists who in turn dethroned him. He called the sonnet 'a moment's monument', and his best short lyrics are instants of compressed emotion cut free of time. In this, as in the suggestiveness of his imagery, he anticipates the French Symbolists. He can also be regarded as the founder of modern verse translation, not only for the freshness of his versions but also for his choice of poets - Villon, Cavalcanti and the young Dante.
In this selection Clive Wilmer has made a personal choice, emphasizing the 'pure poetry' of the lyrics at the expense of the more conventionally Victorian monologues and narratives. He has also included a generous selection from the translations, and provided a biographical and critical introduction.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was born into a noble family in Florence. He fought as a cavalryman, served in a variety of civic and diplomatic positions, and in 1300 attained a preeminent place in the administration of his native city. Florence was at the time caught in a bitter struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines--as well as between contending factions within those political parties--and in 1301, having been sent on an embassy to the Pope in Rome, Dante learned that his enemies had come to power. He was never to see Florence again, and was later banished from the city and sentenced to death. After years of a wandering and uncertain life, Dante finally settled in Ravenna in 1318. Celebrated as a poet from his youth, when he was among those whose writings in Italian were applauded for their sweet new style, Dante was also an influential literary and political theorist. His most famous works are The New Life (circa 1293); De vulgari eloquentia (circa 1304-7), a defense of the use of the vernacular in literature; and his epic vision of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy, which he began in 1307 and finished shortly before his death.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), the son of an exiled Italian scholar and revolutionary, studied painting at the Royal Academy of Arts and was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Though he is best known as a painter, Rossetti was also a poet, and his poems, along with his translations of Dante and Franü¾¶”¼ois Villon, made a lasting impression on such writers as Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Ezra Pound.

Michael Palmer was born in New York City in 1943 and has lived in San Francisco since 1969. He has published ten collections of poetry and has taught at universities in the United States and Europe. He has worked extensively with contemporary dance for twenty-five years and has collaborated with numerous visual artists and composers. His most recent collections are At Passages (1995), The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (1998), The Promises of Glass (2000), and Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988 (2001).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781847771209
ISBN 10	1847771203
Title	Selected Poems and Translations
Author	Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Carcanet Press Ltd
Year published	1997-05-23
Number of pages	220
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.