My measure, for better or worse, of a good poem in Italian is whether or not halfway through I begin translating it in my head. With Pierluigi Cappello it took only the first two lines of the first poem of his I read: “Così come oggi tanti anni fa / mandate a dire all’imperatore” (“As long ago, so too today / go tell it to the emperor”). I had to know the answer, to unravel the knot of the opening line, and to figure out how, if it all, it related to the second . . . continue reading