Anny Ballardini

BIO

Anny Ballardini completed her PhD (2013) at the University of Verona; her dissertation explores Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy in relation to contemporary American Poetry. Her MFA (2008) at the University of New Orleans was earned with a specialization in poetry. She has published two collections of poetry: Ghost Dance in 33 Movements (Otoliths, 2009) and Opening and Closing Numbers (Moria, 2005). Her writing appears in the online collections Instruments of Change (Lavender Ink, 2007), Blogging as the sharing of knowledge, Poetry (Lavender Ink, 2006), Architecting Fate,  Arakawa and Gins, and Architecture and Philosophy (AG3, 2010).

As a literary editor, she is the founder and editor of the Poets’ Corner (2004-present). She has translated Henry Gould’s In RI (2010), and several poets from English into Italian: Dennis Barone, Landis Everson, Ruth Fainlight, James Finnegan, Fan Ogilvie, Ann Fisher-Wirth; from Italian into English: Michele Pierri’s poetry, among others. She edited Ekleksographia’s special section on translation at http://ekleksographia.ahadadabooks.com/ballardini/index.html.

Ballardini works as a translator and interpreter, and teaches English in Bolzano, South Tyrol.

 

 

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Talking in Words

A – Maxine

Now that there’s no life in the life of you
My legends crowd the damp caves of emptiness
Together with the ones for my Father
& mother & Ancestors
Often convened before
To ask my devoted hope
To heal in fairy clouds

Those clouds used to gather around your pretty face
With your faithful self breaking through in chatty displays

There is more tragic peace in me
After the long premonitory despairing silence
Since you like the white rocking chair

And I sit in the dark in front of you
And feign as if
As if I believed
Without a glimpse,
In eternal life.
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Talking in Words

B – Maxine

The plain ended at the far round horizon
The white shape that was I
Was playing the drums
An Indian rhythm for my Father
When I woke up
Asking myself
In the middle of the night

You hated your one piano lesson
And asked for the drums

On one of my last visits I promised
You, confined by medicines in bed,
I would buy you the drums

Yesterday I thought all day
Of what I did not have time to give
The drums you could never play
In and out of a thin guilt
That gripped me from life.

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