Ardengo Soffici Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms
Ardengo Soffici
Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms
Translated from Italian by
OLIVIA E. SEARS
Preface by
MARJORIE PERLOFF
$20.00
120 pages
September 15, 2022
ISBN 978-1-954218-05-5
Distributed by Asterism (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
BIOS
ARDENGO SOFFICI (1879-1964) was an Italian painter, poet, and art critic associated with Florentine Futurism. Years spent in Parisian artistic circles spurred Soffici to champion an artistic renewal in Italy, introducing French impressionism and cubism and a vibrant magazine culture.
OLIVIA E. SEARS is a translator of Italian poetry and prose, specializing in avant-garde women writers. She founded the Center for the Art of Translation and the journal Two Lines, where she served as editor for twelve years.
MARJORIE PERLOFF is an Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic in the United States. Her books include The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, Wittgenstein's Ladder, and her cultural memoir, The Vienna Paradox. Perloff has held Guggenheim, NEH, and Huntington fellowships, served on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Humanities Center, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ardengo Soffici
Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms
Translated from Italian by
OLIVIA E. SEARS
Preface by
MARJORIE PERLOFF
A vital reconstruction of Italian Futurist poet Ardengo Soffici’s visual poetics, presented for the first time in English in Olivia E. Sears’s exacting translations.
With unexpected lyricism, buzzing between the entropic and the erotic, Soffici’s unrelenting poems manifest his milieu’s fascination with the metropolis. Guillaume Apollinaire called it “very important work, rich in fresh beauties.” This facsimile-style edition—with a foreword by Marjorie Perloff, helpful annotations, and an informative afterword by the translator—offers a glimpse into the vibrant early avant-garde, when modernity held tremendous promise.
“A very important work, rich in fresh beauties.” —Guillaume Apollinaire
“Sears’s translation is superb. It is exciting to meet a new writer, so wonderfully introduced to us by Marjorie Perloff’s excellent preface. Brava!” —Mary Ann Caws, editor of the Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry
“Ardengo Soffici’s Franco-Italian Futurist poetry will leave you shaken and stirred like that first martini of the afternoon. And Olivia Sears’s translation will make you see stars (as Soffici hits you upside the head) as well as heart-breaking wonders in the streets of Paris, Florence, and Rome: ‘Delight electric breath molecules expanding with the air along the geometry of open houses.’” —James Brook
“These are poems from the ‘modern’ world—one now as vanished and remote as the Baroque and Classical realms had been for the Futurists. The excitement over electricity—still novel in its infiltration of urban life—radio, cinema, automobiles and cigarettes—is palpable. With their unruly combinations of display and text fonts, these graphic poems are the quintessence of Futurist chaotic energy. This splendid typo-translation does not just preserve their impact, it revives their verve and vitality.” —Johanna Drucker, JD: ABCs
BIOS
ARDENGO SOFFICI (1879-1964) was an Italian painter, poet, and art critic associated with Florentine Futurism. Years spent in Parisian artistic circles spurred Soffici to champion an artistic renewal in Italy, introducing French impressionism and cubism and a vibrant magazine culture.
OLIVIA E. SEARS is a translator of Italian poetry and prose, specializing in avant-garde women writers. She founded the Center for the Art of Translation and the journal Two Lines, where she served as editor for twelve years.
MARJORIE PERLOFF is an Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic in the United States. Her books include The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, Wittgenstein's Ladder, and her cultural memoir, The Vienna Paradox. Perloff has held Guggenheim, NEH, and Huntington fellowships, served on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Humanities Center, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PRESS
Reviewed by Albe Harlow for The Hopkins Review
Reviewed by Julia Nelsen for Chicago Review
Reviewed by Johanna Drucker for JD: ABCs
Reviewed by Tom Bowden for The Backroom
120 pages
September 15, 2022
ISBN 978-1-954218-05-5
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
