Sandro Penna (12 June 1906 – 21 January 1977) was an Italian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

Biography

Born in

Perugia Perugia ( , ; ; ) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area. It has 162,467 ...

, Penna lived in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

for most of his life. He never had a regular job, contributing to several newspapers and writing almost only poetry. His first poems were published in 1932, through the intervention of

Umberto Saba Umberto Saba (9 March 1883 – 25 August 1957) was an Italian poet and novelist, born Umberto Poli in the cosmopolitan Mediterranean port of Trieste when it was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Poli assumed the pen name "S ...

. Openly

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

, his works were largely marked by his melancholic view of homosexuality as imagination. Penna's economic conditions were often poor, and in his late years a group of intellectuals signed a manifesto in the newspaper ''

Paese Sera ''Paese Sera'' was an Italian afternoon newspaper published between 1949 and 1994. History The newspaper was founded in Rome in 1949, as the afternoon edition of the newspaper ''Il Paese''. Close to the Italian Communist Party, it was intended ...

'' to help him. His affection for young boys was reflected by the constant presence of young boys in his verses, as well as in his taking a 14-year-old street boy from Rome, Raffaele, to the home he shared with his mother in 1956 and living with him, on and off, for fourteen years. According to

Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

, Penna's poetry was made of "an extremely delicate material of city places, with asphalt and grass, whitewashed walls of poor houses, white marbles of the bridges, and everywhere the sea's breath, the murmur of the river in which the trembling night lights reflect". His controversial erotic love poems can be found in English translations in ''This Strange Joy'' (

Ohio State University Press The Ohio State University Press is the university press of Ohio State University. It was founded in 1957. The OSU Press has published approximately 1700 books since its inception. The current director is Tony Sanfilippo, who had previously worke ...

, 1982) and ''Remember me, God of Love'' ( Carcanet, 1993). An epigram of Penna's about the dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Raffaele, scribbled on the back of his portrait by Tano Festa, reads: : Sandro Penna died in Rome in 1977.

Works

* (1956) * (1958) * (1970) * (1976) * (1980, posthumous) *''Confused Dream'' (1988, New York & Madras: Hanuman Books, a translation by George Scrivani. ) *''Within the Sweet Noise of Life'' (2021, London, New York & Calcutta: Seagull Books, translation by Alexander Booth. )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Penna, Sandro 1906 births 1977 deaths Italian male poets Italian LGBTQ poets Gay poets Italian gay writers People from Perugia Analysands of Edoardo Weiss 20th-century Italian poets Burials at the Cimitero Flaminio 20th-century Italian male writers 20th-century Italian LGBTQ people