oet, translator, critic and teacher Milo De Angelis was born in 1951. He lives in his home- town Milan where he teaches in a high-security prison. He has been acknowledged as a lead- er of contemporary Italian poetry right after publishing the first poetry collection Somigli- anze (1976), and he’s been keeping the title for over forty years already. He showed up on a literary stage in the 70s and opposed the politically motivated political literary movement Group 63. In 1977 he co-founded literary magazine “Niebo”, that intended to return to symbolist and romantic traditions with Neo-Avantgarde Narration style. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, which have been translated into many different languages. De Angelis is the translator of a wide variety French writers, including Racine, Baudelaire and Blanchot, Heed has also translated Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura among other Latin texts. His complete poetry spanning from 1969 to 2015 was published in 2017 (Tutte le poesie).

It’s late
clearly. Life, with its
lost pivot, floats vaguely
along the streets, thinking
of all the love that’s been promised. What does it expect from me? Where
is the heartbeat of the forsaken? Is this the mysterious destination of all
that lives?
Home turns away
from the house, everything
is surrendered to the obvious
end, everything flees...
...but the syllable
that gripped the throat
is this.