Haiku for a Season / Haiku per una stagione

Andrea Zanzotto, Anna Secco, Patrick Barron, Anna Secco, Patrick Barron

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780226922225
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Andrea Zanzotto is one of the most important and acclaimed poets of postwar Italy. This collection of ninety-one pseudo-haiku in English and Italian—written over several months during 1984 and then revised slowly over the years—confirms his commitment to experimentation throughout his life. Haiku for a Season represents a multilevel experiment for Zanzotto: first, to compose poetry bilingually; and second, to write in a form foreign to Western poetry. The volume traces the life of a woman from youth to adulthood, using the seasons and the varying landscape as a mirror to reflect her growth and changing attitudes and perceptions. With a lifelong interest in the intersections of nature and culture, Zanzotto displays here his usual precise and surprising sense of the living world. These never-before-published original poems in English appear alongside their Italian versions—not strict translations but parallel texts that can be read separately or in conjunction with the originals. As a sequence of interlinked poems, Haiku for a Season reveals Zanzotto also as a master poet of minimalism. Zanzotto's recent death is a blow to world poetry, and the publication of this book, the last that he approved in manuscript, will be an event in both the United States and in Italy.

Haiku for a Season * Haiku per una stagione

I grew in a thousand

breaths of shadow

but I didn’t forget

* * *

Sono cresciuto tra mille

soffi di ombre

ma non lo posso dimenticare

In April-pink

I arise when

in sunset it sinks

* * *

Nel rosa-aprile

mi risveglio quando

nel tramonto affonda

Borderline of street-lamps

with a touching awareness

sparing a moon-flash

* * *

Profilo di lampioni

con una toccante consapevolezza

che salva un flash di luna

Please: this pink iris

Please: these hot drops

“Please,” that harmonizes all

* * *

Per favore: questo iris rosa

Per favore: queste gocce calde

“Per favore,” che tutto armonizza

The bough caresses

or whips aprilities:

the withdrawal of nothing

made sh-shining tics

* * *

Il ramo accarezza

o stimola aprilità:

il ritirarsi di niente

reso balbettìi lucenti

In reticent spring skies

autumnal leaves, fragments

of far future events

* * *

Nei reticenti cieli di primavera

foglie autunnali, frammenti

di remoti futuri eventi

An interior world-fog generates

frogs and rotten foods

swift fires of eyes burn it all

* * *

Una nebbia dentro al mondo ranocchi

genera, e cibo marcio

poi fuochi di occhi pungenti bruciano tutto

Beyond violet and pink gates:

all eternal exhalation—

Pull them push them

* * *

Tutto si vide attraverso cancelli

violetti e rosa, eterna esalazione—

tirali spingili

Seeking a way out

through some tricky ants

which cram a mindful sunshine

* * *

Cercando una via d’uscita

fra formiche truffaldine

che ammucchiano una densa solarità

A man said “Don’t weave mist”—

this weaving—yet his filaments

everywhere vanishing—

in dazzling memories turn, twist

* * *

Qualcuno disse “No filar caivo”—

questo tessere—pur i suoi filamenti

evanescenti ovunque—

mutano, girano in memorie splendenti

Thin start of the valley

beyond breathing peach-trees

“discovers” thin honey

* * *

Stretto inizio della vallata

dietro peschi respiranti

“scopre” un miele sottile

Gray wind, dust

still flowering

in absent-minded clouds

* * *...