Landscape with Ruins: Selected Poetry of Margherita Guidacci Book

Margherita Guidacci is one of Italy's leading contemporary poets. Ruth Feldman, who has translated many Italian poets into English, has chosen the most interesting and representative of Guidacci's poems in order to present the widest possible sampling of the poet's themes and styles. The poems selected and presented in Landscape with Ruins are beautiful translations that have preserved not only the compassion and wisdom, but also the solemn and soft-voiced tone of the original text. A fundamental aspect of Guidacci's poetry is her interest in landscape--a landscape that is both physical and metaphysical, or one that is both natural and historical, inhabited by generations of men and women who have left their traces on it before disappearing--precisely a "landscape with ruins." Feldman's translations do not oversimplify the seeming naturalness and simplicity of Guidacci's poetry, which is imbued with a religiosity and sensitivity that transcend her personal self and point to a very high conception of poetry and its function. Guidacci is also profoundly modern, especially in her consciousness of the contrast between the infinity perceived and the limitation of language to express it. This contrast is particularly evident and touching in those poems in which she speaks with a voice that is close to nature--the universe, the starred sky, and the earth--as the impassive companion of humans.