I present these English translations of Giacomo Garzya's images of his native Campania very cautiously. After all, almost everyone has words of warning about translation:

"Translation from one language into another...
is like gazing at a Flemish tapestry
with the wrong side out." (Cervantes)

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation." (Robert Frost)

Yet we all know the difference between a good translation and a bad one. And we all know how indebted we are to the centuries of translators who have given us with the literature of other cultures, ancient and modern.

In the sense of the 20th-century form known as "Imagism", Garzya favors precision, even isolation, of single images and clear, sharp language. As with all poets, he has a sense of cadence and euphony but is less interested in formal meter and rhyme than in the brief flash that lets the reader see something new. It might have been more convenient to present his poems in paragraph form and call it a prose translation. I have chosen instead to follow the erratic typographic form chosen by the poet, single lines (even of a single word), one above the other, to achieve the effect of a parade of images.

I have tried not to inject myself into his lines and have provided a few notes for some of his references that might not be familiar to the non-Italian reader. To the extent that I have succeeded, I am content; if I have failed, well, give my regards to Cervantes and Robert Frost.

JEFF MATTHEWS