"Andrea Zanzotto's poetics have often been defined as emerging out of Romanticism, yet his work defies the confines of such “schools” and marks its own path. Working across linguistic realities, Zanzotto exploits the “living” and “mobile” traits of words to expand the limits of language. Words are imagination and not simply representation and as such give voice to a constantly fluctuating sense of reality. The poet's intimate relationship with the landscape makes it easy to envision him as a sort of linguistic mountain-goat daring the perilous edges of language as an expression of survival" -- Pasquale Verdicchio.

Andrea Zanzotto (1921-2011) was regarded as one of the major Italian poets of the 20th century. He is the author of many volumes of poetry among which are Dietro il paesaggio (1951), IX Ecloghe (1962), La Beltà (1968),Pasque (1973), Fosfeni (1983), and Idioma (1986), Meteo(1996) and Sovrimpressioni (2001). He has received several major literary prizes, including the Viareggio (1979), the Librex-Montale (1983), and the Feltrinelli (1987). This translation of Fosfeni is the first full-length volume to appear in English. Andrea Zanzotto died on October 18, 2011.

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Pasquale Verdicchio teaches literature and film in the department of literature at the University of California-San Diego. As a poet, translator, and essayist, he has published translations of Pasolini, Merini, Caproni, Porta, and Gramsci. He is the author of Devils In Paradise: Writings on Post-Emigrant Cultures and the poetry collection The House Is Past, Passenger: Selected Poems (Porta, Antonio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 2000) and The Wall of the Earth(Caproni, Giorgio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 1992).

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