Book record
Nihil
Alfredo de Palchi
Translated from Italian by John Taylor
Nihil, by Alfredo de Palchi and translated by John Taylor, does not soften its philosophical weather. The title means nothing, or gestures toward nothingness, and de Palchi’s Italian poetry is often fierce, spare, bodily, and confrontational. Taylor’s translation gives English readers a version of that severity without turning it into abstraction. I would read Nihil for its hard edge, the way a poem can face negation and still produce force. Nothingness here is not merely an idea; it may be historical, erotic, mortal, or linguistic. The book sounds like one that refuses consolation in the ordinary sense. Yet refusal itself can become a kind of energy. Some poems keep us alive by saying no with enough precision.
- Published
- 2017
- Publisher
- Xenos Books / Chelsea Editions
- Language
- Italian
- Country
- Italy
- ISBN
- 9781879378643