Rome

Rafael Alberti (1902–99) was a Spanish poet, member of Generación ’27, and one of the greatest literary figures in twentieth-century Spanish literature. After the Spanish Civil War, he lived in exile for forty years, returning to Spain in 1977. Anthony L. Geist is professor of Spanish literature at the University of Washington. His translation of the Peruvian poet Luis Hernández’s The School of Solitude, also published by Swan Isle Press, was a finalist for the PEN Prize. He is also vice chair of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Giuseppe Leporace recently retired as a senior lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Washington. His English translations include all the works of the Italian poet Amelia Rosselli as well as a selection of poems by Mark Strand. He lives in Italy, just north of Rome. Adam L. Weintraub is an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and vice-chair for the Photographic Center Northwest.  He lives in Seattle.

"Rafael Alberti certainly had a love-hate relationship with the city, which is what makes the poems in Rome: Pedestrians Beware (Roma: Peligro para caminantes) so alive—and often quite comic.This edition of Rome: Pedestrians Beware takes the form of a rectangular-shaped book, which makes sense considering that each poem is translated from the Spanish into both English, by Anthony L. Geist, and Italian, by Giuseppe Leporace. Geist also contributes a brief introduction, and he and Leporace co-author a short essay entitled ‘Alberti, Translators Beware,’ which mostly focuses on the book’s inspiration, a class the two taught where students traveled to important places in Alberti’s life in Spain and Rome.The other contributor to the book is photographer Adam L. Weintraub who, in his essay ‘The Language of Light,’ notes that while he originally intended to faithfully translate Alberti’s images into photographs, he soon realized that the ever-evolving cityscape meant that he would have ‘to honor Alberti’s concepts, not his precise words,’ which were written in the mid-60s. Weintraub tells us to ‘Enjoy the occasional glow of a mobile phone! Ignore the Smart car! And revel in the reality of Rome, today, eternally changing for subsequent eras.’"