Tamarisks (Myricae) is Giovanni Pascoli’s first major collection of verse. Many of its poems center on manifestations of the rural. Nature is at once an interpretation and interpolation of humanity. These compositions explore the countryside, experience the seasons and their alternation, relate the rhythms of agrarian labor, seek the blooming flower, spy the secluded nest. The collection draws on everyday objects, the changing landscape, the Anthropocene, the disenfranchised, and the natural world to explore humanity’s relationship to nature and to the modern world.
Tamarisks is a liminal text, rooted in the classical lyrical tradition. It heralded the innovations and experimentation of the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. In breaking with the past and articulating a new poetic language, it is a foundational statement for modern Italian poetry. Tamarisks’ poems and sections develop an internal dialogue that reflects the mediation between the poetic voice and external reality. Pascoli’s poetry is a single vast meditation that explores possibilities by engaging in diverse poetic strategies contemporaneously. The lowly tamarisk, at once humble and noble, is always poetry.
This publication joins Italica Press’s already published translation of Pascoli’s Convivial Poems.
Introduction, bibliography, first-line index, and notes, 330 pages.
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