Scalzo, Zachary J.

Sandro Penna, an understudied Italian poet whose literary corpus is produced
during the end period and eventual fall of Italian fascism, writes Appunti, the second
volume of his major poetic corpus, from 1938-49. In it, he explicates a poetic of an
unapologetic, open homoeroticism that allows one to examine the obstacles a translator
faces in considering how one can remain faithful to the original poems and the identity
the poet creates. Keeping in mind theoretical influences informing the creation and
translation of poetry and the political choices inherent therein, my translations of these
poems mediate the content and form in the target text to maintain the importance of the
context in which the originals are written. This thesis and these translations aim to reexamine the importance of Penna as a poet, address the importance of translation in the
establishment of foreign poets, and develop a new perspective in Translation Studies that
considers the interdisciplinary applications of Gender and Sexuality Studies.