Sleep

“[Rosselli’s] language is dominated by a sort of mechanistic quality: an emulsion that takes form on its own, out of anybody’s control, the way one imagines it goes with the most terrible laboratory experiments, tumors, atomic blasts, which are under control only scientifically but not in their manifestations of stupendousness, in their now-objective occurrence. So that the magma—the stupendousness—is fixed in strophic forms that are as closed and absolute as they are arbitrary…. I can’t remember the last time I encountered anything of this kind so powerfully amorphous, so objectively superb.” —Pier Paolo Pasolini

“Each poem feels unfinished but perfect, or like a damaged fresco we can’t quite imagine was ever complete in the first place.” — Luke Roberts, New Left Review

Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996) was a poet, translator, musician, and musicologist, born in Paris to refugees from Italy. After World War II, she settled in Rome and emerged as one of the most powerful voices in postwar Italian literature. Her eight volumes of poetry probed the traumas of the 20th century-for Rosselli both personal and historical.

Barry Schwabsky is the art critic for The Nation and regular contributor to Artforum, where he is also an editor. His most recent books include the poetry collection Trembling Hand Equilibrium and Heretics of Language, a collection of literary criticism. He lives in New York City.

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