Almost Love by Pierre Lepori and translated by Peter Valente

This is poetry from Switzerland.

Almost Love by Pierre Lepori translated by Peter Valente is published by Guernica Editions, Incorporated. This is a Book originally written in Italian. This was published in 2022.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781771837354E12.

Almost Love, by Pierre Lepori and translated by Peter Valente, is an Italian-language Swiss book whose title rests in incompletion. Almost love may be desire that never fully arrives, intimacy interrupted, tenderness withheld, or a feeling that refuses the names available to it. Lepori’s work often moves across languages, theater, queerness, and European literary space, which gives this title additional instability. Valente’s translation brings English readers into that in-between register. I would read Almost Love for its attention to partial feeling. Not every emotional life reaches the clean category. Poetry is particularly good at what hovers before confession, after touch, beside certainty. The word “almost” is not a failure here. It is the actual weather of the book.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.