Poetry
Summer Is Not All
Poesia ed errore
Franco Fortini · 1959
Synopsis
More than one hundred and eighty poems arranged in the order in which they were written, from 1937 to 1957, in six untitled sections. The collection reprints most of the poems from the author's earlier books and adds unpublished pieces and texts that had appeared in journals. It moves from the war and the Resistance to reconstruction, then to the Cold War, in a poetry at first close to hermeticism, then turned toward civic and political themes.
Context
The book was prepared in 1957 and 1958 with Giorgio Bassani, then adviser to the publisher Feltrinelli, who had about a third of the some two hundred and fifty poems proposed set aside and wanted to make it a kind of intimate diary; it appeared with Feltrinelli in 1959. Ten years later, a second edition appeared with Mondadori under the title “Poesia e errore”: Vittorio Sereni, literary director of the house, removed most of the early texts and reorganised the order, so that the two versions do not overlap.
Who it is for
A large collection of twenty years of poems, best read by dated sections rather than from beginning to end.
Prizes and reception
A selection of the author's poems appeared in English in 1992 from Carcanet, translated by Paul Lawton under the title “Summer Is Not All”.