L'Allegria

"Trench warfare and lyric poetry are an unusual-pairing. Some readers would doubtless even recoil at the notion of linking the two. After all, the former shows the ugliness and bestiality that mankind is all too capable of inflicting on the world. The latter, on the other hand, shows the beauty and humanity to which the genius of the human mind can aspire and the lasting beauty that it can produce. And yet there are artists who find, if not beauty, then at least eternal verities in cataclysmic events that can inspire them to creative heights. One such artist was the Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970), whose collection L'Allegria was composed while the poet himself was engaged in the brutal, dehumanizing, life-and-death combat of the trench warfare of World War I." (Frank Hugus, University of Massachusetts Amherst) Wally Swist has published over forty books of poetry and prose. This skillful and faithful translation of L'Allegria exposes Swist's love and ardor for the poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti, most especially, L'Allegria, his "cheerfulness" in the face of adversity.