Luigi Fontanella


Luigi Fontanella is a poet, critic, translator, playwright, and novelist.

Life

He graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome, and Harvard University. He has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, and Wellesley College. He is currently a Professor of Italian at Stony Brook University.
He is the founder of IPA, and the editor of Gradiva and Gradiva Publications.
He is the president of the International Poetry Prize "Gradiva", established in 2012. In 2014 he was awarded the National Poetry Prize "Frascati" for his literary career.
Fontanella lives on Long Island, NY, and Florence, Italy. He is the author of 15 collections of poetry, 9 books of criticism, and 4 books of narrative. His most recent collections are Land of Time ; L'angelo della neve ; Bertgang ; Disunita Ombra ; "L'adolescenza e la notte" ; "La morte rosa".

Awards

Literary Criticism

...his most recent poetry is like a rare hothouse flower blooming in Fontanella's garden, laid out like a golf course, with surprising bridges between pleasure and reflection which, in the end, enliven both author and readers. Fontanella is essentially the transcriber of unique lyric moments in a poetic corpus that is neither too fertile nor too facile, yet shines with a contemporary relevance that carries it well beyond its cycles of conception and completion.

There's great freedom of forms and intonations in Luigi Fontanella's poetry. He doesn't take a strong formal stand; his poetry entertains moments of nearly proselike colloquial narrative along with moments of powerful lyrical tension. There's a movement of extremes, from powerful tonality to near atonality, and I like this a great deal; it's a stance that very effectively catches the spirit that makes work in poetry possible nowadays.

Complete bibliography for poetry in La Poesia di Luigi Fontanella, edited by B. Vincenzi, Cosenza: Macabor, 2018,. Contributions by S. Aglieco, S. Aman, A. Carrera, S. D'Amaro, M. De Angelis, C. Di Lieto, G. Ferroni, F. Filia, B. Garavelli, E. Grasso, F. La Porta, C. Mauro, I. Mugnaini, A. Paganardi, G. Pontiggia, E. Rega, R. Urraro, S. Violante.