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Article: History and Chronicle of the Songbook.(Review)
- Article from:
- Poetry
- Article date:
- June 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Modern Poetry Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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History and Chronicle of the Songbook, by Umberto Saba. Tr. by Stephen Sartarelli. Sheep Meadow Press. $12.95.
Equal in stature to his near-contemporaries Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti, the poet and prose-writer Umberto Saba (1883-1954) has been comparatively neglected in the United States. I myself discovered Saba's writings while I was living in Paris during the 1980s. His self-searching poems and poignant stories (now also available from Sheep Meadow) were translated into French during this period, and I was hardly alone in wishing to put the man's work into every friend's hands. Saba's intimism, psychoanalytical in motivation yet not dogmatically so, ...