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Distributed for Seagull Books

Selected Poems

The first English translation of an Italian poet known for his uncompromising integrity and strong leftist sympathy for the working man.
 
Born in a sub-proletarian ghetto in Italy in 1930 under the fascist regime, Luigi Di Ruscio was an urchin running wild in the countryside, a Communist with clear anarchist leanings, a jack-of-all-trades. In 1957 he emigrated to Oslo, where he worked for forty years in a steel-wire factory, spending his evenings at the typewriter, delving with furious energy into his native Italian. Di Ruscio insisted that whereas the language of power is always a contrived, one-way fabrication, the language of the underprivileged is upfront and direct, aiming straight and sharp for the truth. Caustic as a shopfloor scouring agent, exhilarating in its overabundance, humor, and outspokenness, Selected Poems stands as a testament of tenacity, a record of class struggle, and a vital presence for our times.
 

300 pages | 6 1/4 x 9 1/4 | © 2023

The Italian List

Poetry


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Table of Contents

Introduction
From ’We Can’t Get Used to Dying’ (1953)
From ’Witches Wheelgrind Their Dentures’ (1966)
From ’Enunciations’ (1993)
From ’Apprenticeships’ (1978)
From ’Repression: A User’s Manual’ (1980)
From ’The Last Collection’ (2002)
From ’The Laughing God’ (2008)

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