Joseph Bathanti, an award-winning American poet and professor, is little known in Italy. Th is fi rst collection of poetry to appear in Italian should change that. The translations by Morbiducci and Di Mona read incredibly fl uently, and capture the pitch-perfect tone of the poems. Bathanti is lucky to have found these two translators, and Italian readers even more.

Sempre Fidele is the record of a poet's search for beauty. Bathanti stares at the patriarchal muteness lodged in the immigrant experience and takes on the task of putting into form a forbidding origin from fathers full of ire and silence. Mythologized, the ancestors become an incarnation of the most heroic theme in American literature: failing fathers who bear the fire of hope. Th e masterful, loving translation of Marina Morbiducci, with Darcy Di Mona, is an event-not to be missed.

Sempre Fidele is the apt title of Joseph Bathanti's impressive new collection of poems and the fi rst to appear in an Italian translation. As the Roman family gods tell us, "Where your gods go, there your home is." Bathanti remains faithful to his craft, particularly the diffi cult art of the lyric which he employs so fl exibly to tell a story. Sempre Fidele, in light of translating lyrics, is the inspired Italian version by Marina Morbiducci and Darcy Di Mona.