PETER COVINO

Translator

Translations

Peter’s newest translation project, What Sex Is Death? Dario Bellezza Selected Poems, won the Wisconsin Press Prize for Poetry in Translation and will appear in spring 2025.
See the book link here.

As a FY 2019 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Translation, Peter’s work on 20th- and 21st-Century Italian and Italian American Poets, such as Dario Bellezza, Livia di Stefani, Maurizio Cucchi, Vivian Lamarque, Giorgio Bassani, Ricardo Cordiferro, Righi Simplicio, Efrem Bartoletti, and Maria Mazziotti Gillan has appeared in such publications as The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, Modern European Poets 1960-2008 (Graywolf P.), ItaloAmericana: The History of Literature by Italian in the U.S. (Fordham UP), Arkansas International, Asymptote, the NEA website, Colorado Review, Interim, Witness, and Words without Borders.

Publications

Winner of the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, selected by Geoffrey Brock

“Dario Bellezza—mentored by Morante and championed by Pasolini, who called him ‘the best poet of the new generation’—remains one of the essential Italian voices of the latter half of the twentieth century. As an out gay man, he wrote transgressive poems of love and sex and polemic (by turns tender, brash, angry, defiant) as the gay-rights struggles of the sixties and seventies morphed into the AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties. Thanks to poet-translator Peter Covino’s scrupulous yet daring versions, which are labors both of love and skill, American readers can now trace the arc of Bellezza’s career, from his early Invective and License to his final Proclamation on Glamor—each an aching, disruptive testament to ‘this infected world.’”

—Geoffrey Brock, University of Arkansas

Praise

“A carefully curated volume composed of more than seventy essential translations of Bellezza’s poems. A prizewinning multivolume author of verse in his own right, Covino offers non-Italian readers a most adept and lyrical series of translations that seem, in themselves, original compositions.”

Anthony Julian Tamburri, Distinguished Professor and Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

“In this groundbreaking book, Italian American queer poet Peter Covino for the first time introduces an English-speaking audience to Dario Bellezza’s riveting work through a complex theoretical introduction, incisive selection, and nuanced translation. The volume emphasizes Bellezza’s invaluable impact on the emergence of an Italian queer culture—here conceptualized as providing an innovative perspective on contemporary Italian literature—while it also contributes to the shaping of a transnational Italian queerness.”

Caterina Romeo, Sapienza Università di Roma, author of Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature

Bellezza, Dario. “My House the Entryway.” “Practical Activities.” Trans. Peter Covino. Arkansas International. Vol 9, Fall 2020: 48-49. Print.

Bellezza, Dario. “Glamor.” & Eight Poems. Witness. Trans. Peter Covino. Spring 2015: 20-37. Print.

Bellezza, Dario. “[Cast-off at the station in Martina Franca].” Trans. Peter Covino. “The City and the Writer.” Poem essay about writing scene in Rome, Italy. Words without Borders, February 2020. Online.
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Peter Covino
Bellezza, Dario. “Infant of a slightly precocious infancy.” Trans. Peter Covino. National Endowment of the Arts, website. Online. Spring 2020.
Bellezza, Dario. “[And I abandon death. Plaything of God.]” “[In my night the worst of your mornings].” “[You no longer enter into my unraveled life.]” and “[Where you sleep I watch over].” Trans. Peter Covino. Asymptote. Jan. 2018. Online.
Bassani, Giorgio. “Ars Poetica.” from Te Lucis Ante. Trans. Peter Covino Poetry Dose, 2018. Forthcoming. Online, with audio file.
Bellezza, Dario. “To Hart Crane.” “Serpenta.” & from “Praise for the Male Body.” Trans. Peter Covino. Colorado Review. Spring 2015: 116-118. Print.
Cordiferro, Ricardo. “Macabre.” “The Feast of September 20th in New York.” Simplicio, Righi.“The Italo-American Polisso.” “The Bricklayers Arrived.” “Today and Tomorrow.” Bartoletti, Efrem. “The Mays.” “In Memory of Joe Hill.” “The I.W.W.” “Remembering Carlo Tresca.” Trans. Peter Covino. ItaloAmericana: The History of Literature by Italians in the United States 1880-1943. Ed. Anthony Tamburri and Robert Viscusi. New York: Fordham University P. Print. Forthcoming. Translated nine poems with explanatory notes of Italian American poets writing in Italian and dialect.

Lamarque, Vivian. “At Vacations End.” Trans. Peter Covino. The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry. Ed. Geoffrey Brock. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2012, 531-532.
Bellezza, Dario. “To Pier Paolo Pasolini.” “[I listened to death in my dream.]” Trans. Peter Covino. Atlanta Review 27.2 (2011):57. Print.
Bellezza, Dario.“[I believe I should have a child].” “[I licked you between dirty sheets].” Cavalli, Patrizia. “[Almost always he who is content is also vulgar].” Cucchi, Maurizio. “Letter and Prayer.” “[From the Cairo to Loreto].” “[He left throwing us].” “[Why do you breathe on my head?]” Lamarque, Vivian. “At Vacation’s End.” “To Pasolini.” Trans. Peter Covino. Modern European Poets (1968-2008). Ed. Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2008, 61-66. Print. Compiled and edited Italian section and provided translations of nine poems with biographical notes.

De Stefani, Livia. “‘Poet to Poet’: “Nocturne n 2.” “Nocturne n 4.” “Nocturne n 6.” “Nocturne n 10.” Trans. Peter Covino. Journal of Italian Translation Vol 4. 2. (2008): 1-7. Print. Translated four poems with a biographical note.
Gillan, Maria Mazziotti. “Due Poesie.” Tuttestorie, traduzioni da Peter Covino (Italy) Fall 2000. Print. Translated two poems into the Italian.