Poets of the Italian Diaspora

Luigi Bonaffini is Professor of Italian at Brooklyn College. He is the editor of the Journal of Italian Translation. Joseph Perricone is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Fordham University. He is the book review editor of the Journal of Italian Translation.

"This book is at the same time a vast discovery and an intimate conversation. All my life I have been curious about the other Italians. I lived in Italy for a year and came to know my relatives there at the same time that I visited the blank spaces where my grandparents and parents and sisters and cousins might have been. Reading this spectacular anthology, I have begun to know the other other Italians, those who have settled in the world's wide spaces, places I have never seen, and to know these distant cousins by way of those elusive truths that only poets can tell." -- -Robert Viscusi The Wolfe Institute "Poets of the Italian Diaspora: A Bilingual Anthology is both an historical and ground-breaking book. It is at the forefront in the recognition of Italophone literature, something that Italy should have unearthed decades ago. With this anthology, Bonaffini and Perricone offer the reader, for the first time, a broad panorama of modern and contemporary Italian lyrical writing outside the geo-cultural boundaries of Italy." -- -Anthony Julian Tamburri Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute "Perricone and Bonafini have collected the best Italian emigre poets from around the world. Here is a rich sampling of their poetry. Whether you call them immigrants, exiles, refugees or displaced persons, every one speaks from the soul with an Italian accent, expressing sentiments of a global phenomenon through a shared native language. The accompanying translations enable English speakers to connect to their experiences. The result is a collection that enables comparative Italian Diasporan studies on a scale never before attempted." -- -Fred Gardaphe John D. Calandra Institute "An outstanding pioneering work that will mark a milestone in Italian Studies and will serve as the foundation of a new discipline, the literature of the Italian Diaspora." -- -Sante Matteo Miami University