Book record
An Orchid Shining in the Hand
Lorenzo Calogero
Translated from Italian by John Taylor
An Orchid Shining in the Hand, by Lorenzo Calogero and translated by John Taylor, has one of those titles that already feels like a poem. Calogero’s Italian poetry carries a reputation for isolation, intensity, and posthumous discovery, and the image of the orchid in the hand gives us beauty made tactile, fragile, and almost impossible to keep. Taylor’s translation introduces English readers to a lyric voice that deserves more attention. I would read this book for its tremor between delicacy and pressure. An orchid can be ornate, but in the hand it becomes vulnerable; the hand itself becomes a site of wonder and risk. Some poems survive because they glow in exactly that way: briefly held, almost too alive to explain.
- Published
- 2015
- Publisher
- Chelsea Editions
- Language
- Italian
- Country
- Italy
- ISBN
- 9780986106125