Go Tell It to the Emperor
The Selected Poems of Pierluigi Cappello

translated by Todd Portnowitz

Spuyten Duyvil : 1 October 2019

From one of Italy’s most widely read and deeply treasured poets: an essential collection of verse, selected from all five of his major works, bringing this unique, mesmerizing voice to an English-speaking audience for the first time, in prize-winning translations

The poems of Pierluigi Cappello “seem all to have been written in pencil,” his translator Todd Portnowitz notes in the introduction to this volume, “elegies for fading memories, they threaten impermanence on the page. And yet the words hold, so assured are they in their leave-taking.”

Whether writing of his snowy home in the Italian alps, of his beloved father, of his extended circle of friends and family, Cappello comes to the reader with his all-embracing spirit, a tenderness and generosity expressed in an everyday language that defies its own simplicity, and a serene clarity that recalls the lyrical work of W. S. Merwin and Wisława Szymborska.

Beginning with his masterful Go Tell It To the Emperor, this selection—supported by a Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets—moves backward toward Cappello’s early work, and closes with a “coda” of poems from the last years of his short life. The victim of a motorbike accident at age sixteen, which severed his spine and left him paralyzed from the waist down, Cappello is a poet of extraordinary resilience, who gazes out on the world with patience and persistence, summoning it with language, refusing to let it drift.

Praise for Cappello and Go Tell It to the Emperor

“An important volume, providing English-language readers with the first satisfactory and orienting ‘map’ of Cappello’s creative journey in the Italian language, and in Friulian . . . Of particular note is the astute job Portnowitz has done in mirroring Cappello’s rhythms, especially in his intelligent use of punctuation and of Cappello’s evocative and lapidary syntax.”

—Luigi Fontanella, Poesia

“The lightness of [Cappello’s] observations, seemingly unencumbered by the burden of analysis, [is] remarkable . . . [Portnowitz] manages to capture the gestalt of how Cappello’s verses move . . . he transmits the feeling of the phrase on your ear, in your body.”

—Eric Fishman, The Cortland Review

"Graceful, fresh translations . . . relaxed and unfussy, true to Cappello’s Italian, which is never difficult although his language is thoroughly shaped and molded. . . . [With a] thoughtful introduction.”

—Federika Randall, Reading in Translation

“A true labor of love . . . Portnowitz’s introduction offers some excellent background on this poet’s all too short life . . . Above all, what a reader who doesn’t read Italian can say with authority about the translations is whether or not they pass the most important test, that is, whether they work as English-language poetry—and I’m thrilled to say they do.”

—Amit Majmudar, Kenyon Review Online

“Cappello’s poetry seems to exist in an uncharted territory, a realm carved out by the young poet between his room and the world outside, between immobility and freedom . . . Ever conscious of his injuries, of pain, of struggle, Cappello’s poetry is nonetheless a poetry of mending, of healing, of understanding, soothing, of finding joy, even.”

—Roberto Galaverni, Corriere della Sera

“Because of the unique creative process employed by the poet, the translation of this work would be an extraordinary challenge for any expert translator; and Todd Portnowitz, in his tireless and remarkably refined effort, has brilliantly grasped and then seamlessly transposed into English all the imagery and linguistic complexities contained in the work at hand.”

—Giuseppe Leporace, 2015 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship Citation

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