No part to play by Maurizio Cucchi and translated by Michael Palma

This is poetry from Italy.

No part to play by Maurizio Cucchi translated by Michael Palma is published by Chelsea Editions. This is a Book originally written in Italian. This was published in 2013.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780988478732E12.

No part to play, by Maurizio Cucchi and translated by Michael Palma, has the tone of a speaker stepping out of assigned drama. Cucchi’s Italian poetry often works through memory, urban life, family, aging, and the ordinary scenes where identity becomes uncertain. The title suggests detachment, but perhaps also relief: what happens when the self is no longer cast in the role it expected? Palma’s translation gives English readers a clean way into that reflective, quietly dramatic space. I would read No part to play for its attention to absence from the stage of one’s own life. The poem becomes a place to consider what remains when performance falls away. Sometimes not having a part is its own strange freedom.

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.