De Angelis, Milo 1951–

PERSONAL: Born June 6, 1951, in Milan Italy; married Giovanni Secure (a poet), 1989; children: Danielle. Education: Attended University of Milan, 1970–74; University of Montpelier, graduated, 1976.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Donzelli Editore, Via Mentana, 2b, 00185, Rome, Italy.

CAREER: Poet and translator. Founder of Niebo (journal); tutor in Greek and Latin.

WRITINGS:

Somiglianze (poems), Guanda (Milan, Italy), 1976, revised edition, 1990.

La corsa dei mantelli, Guanda (Milan, Italy), 1979.

Poesia e destino (poems), Cappelli (Bologna, Italy), 1982.

Millimetri (poems), Einaudi (Turin, Italy), 1983.

Terra del viso, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1985.

Distante un padre, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1989.

Cartina muta, Elytra, 1991.

Finite Intuition: Selected Poetry and Prose, translated by Lawrence Venuti, Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1995.

Between the Blast Furnaces and the Dizziness: A Selection of Poems, 1970–1999, translated by Emanuel Di Pasquale, Chelsea Editions, 2004.

Work published in anthologies, including Italian Poetry, 1960–1980: From Neo to Post Avant-garde, edited by Adriano Spatola and Paul Vengelisti, Red Hill (San Francisco, CA), 1982; New Italian Poets, edited by Dana Gioia and Michael Palma, Story Line (Brownsville, OR), 1991; Une autre anthologie, edited by Henri Deluy, Fourbis (Paris, France), 1992; and Anni '80: poesia italiana, edited by Luca Cesari and Roberto Carifi, Jaca Book (Milan, Italy), 1993.

TRANSLATOR

Maurice Blanchot, L'attesa l'oblio, Guanda (Milan, Italy), 1978.

Charles Baudelaire, I paradisi artificiali, Guanda (Milan, Italy), 1983.

(And editor, with Marta Bertamini) Claudius Claudianus, Il rapimento di Proserpina, Marcos & Marcos (Milan, Italy), 1984.

SIDELIGHTS: Described as "a sophisticated experimentalist who has set out to reinvent poetry in postmodern terms" by Lawrence Venuti in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Milo de Angelis has written poems since he was a young man in the early 1970s. The function of poetry for de Angelis is "to stimulate thinking by pushing at the limits of language and transgressing cultural norms … always aware that their destruction is simultaneously tragic and creative, the end of existence and the careless proliferation of new beginnings," stated Venuti.

Among de Angelis's poetry collections are Somiglianze and Millimetri. Venuti noted that each work seeks to "challenge consciousness" and "break down" self-identity. Millimetri exhibits an "increase in the rapid discontinuity" of de Angelis's poetry, and by the late 1990s, the poet employed "symbolist" stylistic considerations in Finite Intuition: Selected Poetry and Prose. R. Watson wrote in Chelsea that de Angelis "sometimes achieves quite masterful effects, poems alive with a shifting mystery, a movement of compelling and intriguing power." Finite Intuition contains English translations of poetry and a number of essays that were originally published between 1976 and 1989.

John Taylor, writing in the Antioch Review, found the poems in Between the Blast Furnaces and the Dizziness: A Selection of Poems, 1970–1999 to be "dense, [and] complex," and stated that, "as the title indicates, a first exposure can be dizzying." Taylor noted de Angelis's "daring juxtapositions of images, symbols, and obscure personal allusions. His cognitive leaps are many."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Affinati, Eraldo, Patto giurato: la poesia de Milo de Angelis, Tracce (Pescara, Italy), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 128: Twentieth-Century Italian Poets, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1993.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, fall, 2004, John Taylor, review of Between the Blast Furnaces and the Dizziness: A Selection of Poems, 1970–1999, p. 777.

Chelsea, issue 64, 1998, R. Watson, review of Finite Intuition: Selected Poetry and Prose, pp. 240-245.