The pivotal 1976 work of one of Italy's most significant post-war voices asks how poetry can document lived experience while dialoguing with the Petrarchan sonnet tradition. Long fascinated by the classical sonnet as an ideal model, Rosselli took on the Petrarchan structure of a canzoniere -- a text in which meaning is generated by sequence -- to contain the flood of 175 poems for her third collection. Speaking of DOCUMENT, Rosselli said: 'It was hard work; those who do not write poetry cannot imagine to what lengths poets go in order to compose, even if they barely scrape by, and even if it's still the case that poetry is either inspired or worthless.' This 'hard work' conveyed the pain, intensity, and turmoil of her existence and of our own violent chaotic times. Originally published in 1976, DOCUMENT is the last of her major collections to be translated into English.

The first English-language collection of Witold Wirpsza, a major post-war Polish poet known for his subversive language, irony, and political satire. Witold Wirpsza's poetry belongs to an experimental and intellectual current less present in the Whitmanian English-language tradition. Reveling in spoof, buffoonery, the grotesque, paradox, hyperbole, and nonsense, his work employs every poetic means to undermine our propensity to take what is being said at face value. His linguistic explorations stem from a mistrust in language as an adequate means of communication and a scrutiny of its susceptibility to abuse and misuse for political ends. By turns 'difficult,' abstract, darkly humorous, his poetry is steeped in ethical and social concerns. This collection draws from his many books, covering a period from the late 1940s to the 1980s, and includes poetic cycles on Stalin, on music, on dance, and the 1955 exhibit, The Family of Man.

The pivotal 1976 work of one of Italy's most significant post-war voices asks how poetry can document lived experience while dialoguing with the Petrarchan sonnet tradition. Long fascinated by the classical sonnet as an ideal model, Rosselli took on the Petrarchan structure of a canzoniere -- a text in which meaning is generated by sequence -- to contain the flood of 175 poems for her third collection. Speaking of DOCUMENT, Rosselli said: 'It was hard work; those who do not write poetry cannot imagine to what lengths poets go in order to compose, even if they barely scrape by, and even if it's still the case that poetry is either inspired or worthless.' This 'hard work' conveyed the pain, intensity, and turmoil of her existence and of our own violent chaotic times. Originally published in 1976, DOCUMENT is the last of her major collections to be translated into English.

The first English-language collection of Witold Wirpsza, a major post-war Polish poet known for his subversive language, irony, and political satire. Witold Wirpsza's poetry belongs to an experimental and intellectual current less present in the Whitmanian English-language tradition. Reveling in spoof, buffoonery, the grotesque, paradox, hyperbole, and nonsense, his work employs every poetic means to undermine our propensity to take what is being said at face value. His linguistic explorations stem from a mistrust in language as an adequate means of communication and a scrutiny of its susceptibility to abuse and misuse for political ends. By turns 'difficult,' abstract, darkly humorous, his poetry is steeped in ethical and social concerns. This collection draws from his many books, covering a period from the late 1940s to the 1980s, and includes poetic cycles on Stalin, on music, on dance, and the 1955 exhibit, The Family of Man.