DANIELE PANTANO
poet, translator, editor, critic
Pantano--Berner Zeitung.pdf
THE OLDEST HANDS IN THE WORLD
THE POSSIBLE IS MONSTROUS
OPPRESSIVE LIGHT
TRAKL'S COLLECTED WORKS
THE POSSIBLE IS MONSTROUS: SELECTED POEMS BY FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT
Much the way Dürrenmatt himself reclaims in verse the psyche of the Minotaur from the ancient labyrinth, so Daniele Pantano brings down from the Alps and the secret land of bank vaults the poetry of Switzerland's most important writer of the twentieth century. The fidelity of these translations not only owes itself to Pantano being one of Dürrenmatt's countrymen. He is a poet as well, one with a real ear and eye for Dürrenmatt's sardonic imagination that is peculiarly Swiss and pan-European at the same time.
--James Reidel
This collection is long overdue. Long acknowledged as a master playwright and novelist, Dürrenmatt is at last presented as one of the great poets of the last century. Daniele Pantano's excellent translation captures all the wit of a writer frustrated by the times he lived in - balancing at once the personal and the political to produce work that is genuinely vivid and exciting.
--Robert Shearman
The Possible Is Monstrous is worthy of serious attention and should be in every academic library and on every poet's bookshelf.
--Okla Elliott, The Southeast Review
Black Lawrence Press, Dzanc Books, 2010
"I make a dish out of nothing" could be a poetic creed as well as a line from a Daniele Pantano poem, for he is an expert in molding the shapelessness of experience into a variety of crafted forms. A romantic with a sharp intelligence, Pantano gives us poems where heart and mind move together as on a verbal bicycle for two.
--Billy Collins
Fierce, uncompromising and completely authentic, The Oldest Hands in the World is a remarkable debut collection. Scratch that-- The Oldest Hands in the World is a remarkable collection, period.
--Jay Hopler
The poems of Swiss-born Daniele Pantano are shadowed by travel and exile, rich with history, music, and a love of language. Sensuous, dramatic and intelligent, The Oldest Hands in the World is a stirring introduction to a strong and talented young poet.
--Peter Meinke
The Oldest Hands in the World : Poems in which any moment can crack open to reveal millennia, so that their muscular yet bumpy rhythms prove of a piece with their insights, and even the abstractions have knuckles and roughage, suggesting we've found an heir to Czeslaw Milosz.
--John Domini
OPPRESSIVE LIGHT: SELECTED POEMS BY ROBERT WALSER
with an introduction by Carolyn Forché
Available for pre-order via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, etc.
COMING IN FEBRUARY 2012!
These poems show the quality we have now come to call visionary. This is a voice that sees itself as if from another planet, with clarity, and impartiality of view that is remarkable and, often, devastating. One is reminded of Trakl's voice here, its dark intimacy; this is the lullaby for the self, but also for the self's moment in time ("there is so much in the hours") as we know it: a spare voice points at the two trees in the snow, at a trembling of a lip. And, yet, here, so unlike Trakl's voice, we hear: "The room is full of sky...I speak and I laugh:/my room is the sky./How I love the sky" and "happiness is the happiness of evening." From this transformation, wisdom comes: "something you enshrine will always be with you." Finally, among many fine poems here, I particularly found myself struck by such pieces as "Joy of Life" and "The Comfort of Complaining" where one of the most complex minds of the 20th Century gives us lines of utter simplicity, poise.
--Ilya Kaminsky
Black Lawrence Press, Dzanc Books
MASS GRAVES XIX - XXII
Welcome him! Daniele Pantano has arrived in Britain carrying Swiss papers, which are crumpled by history and stained by broken traditions. At the centre of this vital writing there is a life (though it is in fragments, literary ones). There is writing in the margins that can't be trusted. A water-damaged review stands in front of the writing, its lines more like erasures than invitations, barbed wire with tatters of words upon it. Enigmas are small but Pantano suspects the crimes are great.
--Robert Sheppard
There's an urgency about these compelling poems, as if they had to be written. As if the writer can't afford to waste a word or line. Mass Graves leaves you, in the best sense, hungry for more.
-- Cliff Yates
The Forks, Knives and Spoons Press, 2011
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF GEORG TRAKL
COMING SOON!
Daniele Pantano
www.danielepantano.ch
Daniele Pantano is one of the most interesting and versatile English-language poets of his generation.
--Neue Zürcher Zeitung
www.danielepantano.ch © 2007-2012
