Selected Poems

The first English translation of an Italian poet known for his uncompromising integrity and strong leftist sympathy for the working man.
 
Born in a sub-proletarian ghetto in Italy in 1930 under the fascist regime, Luigi Di Ruscio was an urchin running wild in the countryside, a Communist with clear anarchist leanings, a jack-of-all-trades. In 1957 he emigrated to Oslo, where he worked for forty years in a steel-wire factory, spending his evenings at the typewriter, delving with furious energy into his native Italian. Di Ruscio insisted that whereas the language of power is always a contrived, one-way fabrication, the language of the underprivileged is upfront and direct, aiming straight and sharp for the truth. Caustic as a shopfloor scouring agent, exhilarating in its overabundance, humor, and outspokenness, Selected Poems stands as a testament of tenacity, a record of class struggle, and a vital presence for our times.
 

Luigi Di Ruscio (1930–2011) was an Italian poet and writer, who lived in Norway from 1957 through the end of his life.

Cristina Viti is a poet and translator working with Italian, English, and French.