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Cavalcanty

Peter Hughes

Cover Image of Cavalcanty by Peter Hughes
10% off eBook (EPUB)
Categories: 21st Century, British, Italian, Language, Medieval, Translation
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (72 pages)
(Pub. May 2017)
9781784103880
Out of Stock
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. May 2017)
9781784103897
£7.99 £7.19
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • The thirteenth-century Tuscan poet Guido Cavalcanti helped to create a new poetry that belonged to the city rather than the court, and through his use of Tuscan vernacular gave an extraordinary intensity and craft to his explorations of the social and psychological dimensions of love. Peter Hughes has taken Cavalcanti’s groundbreaking poems and used them as springboards for his own creative versions. Following in the footsteps of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who translated Cavalcanti for the nineteenth century, and Ezra Pound, who translated him for the twentieth, Peter Hughes invites us to consider Cavalcanti’s lustrous Tuscan songs afresh.
    Peter Hughes was born in Oxford in 1956. He lived in Italy for several years and continues to find inspiration in Italian literature. He now lives on the Norfolk coast where he runs Oystercatcher Press, an imprint which has published over 100 pamphlets of exciting poetry. A Selected Poems came out ... read more
    'Uncompromisingly vivid.'
    London Magazine


    'This coruscating and athletic détournement of the Italian is an audacious and seductive display that leaves us wanting more.'
    John James


    '€˜enough vim and versatility to launch a thousand poems, let alone fifty-two. Purists will object vigorously to this version; impurists will object vigorously to any other.'€™
    Rod Mengham


      'The crucial preoccupation of Cavalcanti'€™s poetry -€“ how do I overcome the distance between me and what is not me -€“ translates easily into a world where being plugged in is not the same as being connected.'

    Harry Cochrane, TLS


     'What an erotic and libidinous bonanza ... These are the songs my ears are still ringing to, tinnitus the price of love.'
    Simon Smith


    'Peter Hughes's vulgar eloquence fuses earthy, contemporary imagery with Cavalcanti's "elevated" elusive themes, converting his verses to an utterly original contemporary language ... and affording exquisite, tactile pleasure.'
    Lou Rowan


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