Amelia Rosselli

Obtuse Diary Amelia Rosselli

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Deborah Woodard, Roberta Antognini, and Dario De Pasquale. OBTUSE DIARY, published in 1990 as Diario Ottuso, is a collection of three rational prose experiments by one of Italy's most distinctive post-war poets. These early texts (1954-1968) by Amelia Rosselli reveal an unintentional unity through trilingual wordplay, experiments in syntactic structure, and the music possible in prose. The texts are deeply personal, awkward, and often startling--never simply a diary or an autobiography. Rosselli reclaims Italian on her own terms as she grapples with her felt experience as a refugee. This bilingual edition includes an audio download of selections read in both Italian and English by translators Dario De Pasquale and Deborah Woodard. The three texts reveal that experimenting in prose is what attracts me: it is equally true and likely that more can be said in prose than in poetry, which is often mannerist or decorative.--Amelia Rosselli