Writing clandestine sonnets in local dialect for over fifteen years whilst leading a respectably conformist life of letters and bureaucracy, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli erected a lasting poetical monument to the people of nineteenth-century Rome. Set against the chequered background of the city of the six Ps - Pope, priests, princes, prostitutes, parasites and the poor - Belli's sometimes scandalous sonnets deal with life's elementals: love, death, sex, food, money, family, religion and politics. In his immense oeuvre, sampled here in a sizeable and varied selection of the best poems, people from every course and manner of life have their say - housewives, mothers, beggars, lovers, businessmen, popes, whores, doctors, thieves, lawyers, priests, penpushers, actresses, gossips and many more. Their voices and preoccupations are brilliantly and accurately rendered in this volume by Mike Stocks, one of the finest sonneteers of our day.
- ISBN10 1847490409
- ISBN13 9781847490407
- Publish Date 1 December 2007 (first published 1 May 2007)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 15 May 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Alma Books Ltd
- Imprint Oneworld Classics Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 200
- Language English