bio

Fosildo Mirtunzio was the pseudonymous and otherwise unknown author of Veglie auttunnali [Autumnal Vigils], published in Venice in 1796. The translations of his two poems in this issue, as well as the two from Malatesti, will appear in the forthcoming anthology Dancing with the Sphinx: Riddle Poems, edited by Kate Light and Kathrine Varnes.

Giovanni Raboni, born in Milan in 1932, worked as an editor and critic. His status as perhaps the greatest Italian poet of his generation is attested to by the inclusion of his complete poems, L’opera poetica (2006), in the prestigious Meridiani series of standard Italian authors. He also published several volumes of critical essays, as well as translations of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal and Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, among many others. He died in September 2004.

Antonio Malatesti (1610 – 1672) was a Florentine poet. His collection of riddles, Una Corona di Enigmi, was published in 1640. La Tina, a sequence of bawdy rustic sonnets, was dedicated to John Milton and presented to him in manuscript; a new edition, edited from this text by Davide Messina, was published in 2014. Malatesti’s later verse was collected in the posthumous Brindisi dei Ciclopi (1673).

Kate Light’s poetry collections are The Laws of Falling Bodies (Nicholas Roerich Prize, 1997), Open Slowly (2003), and Gravity’s Dream (Donald Justice Award, 2006). A professional violinist, she is also the librettist of The Life and Loves of Joe Coogan, an opera based on an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show; Once Upon the Wind, based on a Russian folk tale; and Einstein’s Mozart: Two Geniuses.

Michael Palma has published two poetry chapbooks, The Egg Shape and Antibodies; two full-length collections, A Fortune in Gold and Begin in Gladness; and an online chapbook, The Ghost of Congress Street. His fourteen translations of modern Italian poets include prizewinning volumes of Guido Gozzano and Diego Valeri with Princeton University Press, as well as books by Maurizio Cucchi, Franco Buffoni, Paolo Valesio, Maura Del Serra, and others. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in many journals and over thirty anthologies.

X.J. Kennedy will have two new books out this year: a comic novel, A Hoarse Half-human Cheer (e-book from Curtis Brown Digital, paperback from CreateSpace) and Fits of Concision: Collected Poems of Six or Fewer Lines (Grolier Poetry Bookshop). His translations include The Bestiary of Guillaume Apollinaire (Johns Hopkins University Press) and the Lysistrata of Aristophanesin the Penn Complete Greek Drama series.

Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321) is widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest poets. His Vita Nova (c. 1292 – 95), a combination of prose and poetry that tells the story of his youthful love for Beatrice, was his first book. In 1295 he entered Florentine politics and in the summer of 1300 he became one of the six governing Priors of Florence, the highest political office. During this time, he was also writing the numerous lyric poems that made him famous in central and northern Italy, as well as studying widely and deeply in a number of subjects.

Andrew Frisardi is originally from Boston and now lives in northern Lazio, Italy, where he works as a writer, translator, and editor. His most recent books are an annotated translation of Dante’s Vita Nova, published by Northwestern University Press in 2012; The Young Dante and the One Love, essays on the Vita Nova published by the Temenos Academy (London) in 2013; and Death of a Dissembler, a poetry collection published in 2014 by White Violet Press.

Nur Jahan (1577 – 1645), was the favorite wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1569 – 1627), and the aunt of Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj Mahal was built. She was the most powerful woman in India during much of her husband’s reign. The language of the Mughal courts was Persian, and the writing of fluent Persian verse was an expected accomplishment of Mughal courtiers.

Dick Davis is Professor Emeritus of Persian at Ohio State University, where he was chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from 2002 to 2012. He has written scholarly works on both English and Persian literature, as well as eight volumes of his own poetry. His publications include volumes of poetry and verse translation chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK), 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK), 1989; The Economist (UK), 2002; The Washington Post, 2010, and The Times Literary Supplement (UK), 2013.