Autobiographical Poems (English and Italian Edition)

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Joan E. Borrelli with Natalia Costa-Zalessow. Edited by Natalia Costa-Zalessow. "In her Rime (1627-28), Francesca Turini Bufalini included a series of sonnets under the subtitle 'Principio dello stato dell'autrice.' These poems are unique for their truly autobiographical nature, openly declared as such by the author herself. None of the European women poets preceding her, or any of her contemporaries, recorded their lives with such precision. In these sonnets, Turini Bufalini gives us a detailed description of her life, from childhood to old age, along with the full spectrum of her emotions. She describes her birth followed by the death of her father and mother, her lonely, rustic but free life as an orphan in her uncle's castle in the wilderness of the Apennines (where she kept company with shepherdesses, rode horses and went hunting), her marriage, her exuberant joys of motherhood, her sad widowhood, love for her children and grandchildren, trouble with her adult sons and the tragic death of one of them. In most poems a strong, narrating 'I' predominates, but frequently the author also addresses herself, her heart and her soul in the personal 'you' voice"--Natalia Costa-Zalessow, from her Introduction.

Natalia Costa-Zalessow, Professor Emerita in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State University, holds a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al XX secolo: Testi e critca, editor of A. Pincherle Rosselli's play, Anima, and its English version, Her Soul, and contributor of articles to academic journals and literary dictionaries
Joan E. Borrell holds an MA in English Literature/Creative Writing and an MA in Italian Language and Literature from San Francisco State University, where she is head of the library's collection acquisition management. Her transations of the poetry and prose of Italian authors appear in a number of scholarly journals and anthologies