Book record
Vanishing Points
Valerio Magrelli
Translated from Italian by Jamie McKendrick
Vanishing Points, by Valerio Magrelli and translated by Jamie McKendrick, is a sharp title for a poet so interested in perception, intellect, and the strange mechanics of the self. A vanishing point is both visual principle and existential joke: the place toward which perspective organizes itself, and the place where things disappear. Magrelli’s Italian poetry often feels precise, witty, philosophical, and quietly unnerving. McKendrick’s translation brings that intelligence into English with the clarity it needs. I would read Vanishing Points for its angles of thought, its sense that ordinary observation can suddenly open into vertigo. The poems do not have to be obscure to be strange. They simply have to look hard enough at how seeing works.
- Published
- 2010
- Publisher
- Macmillan
- Language
- Italian
- Country
- Italy
- ISBN
- 9780374282530