I think it’s a good signifier that a poetry book was nothing but pure agony when it takes me 26 days to read 150 pages. I don’t speak Italian. I can tell the translation is completely wrong. 

Now repeat after me: translation is not a creative writing workshop. 

But that’s what Slavitt did, exclusively. I did not like a single poem, because I knew none were as Cavalcanti wrote them.

I still read through the Italian originals, and I don’t think I’d like them anyway — they’re very repetitive, and feel amateurish as in each, Cavalcanti removes vowels to fit the metre. Just write better??

The ebook has many ridiculous typos as well, and I have to say, how embarrassing for a university press!