inscribed. rev 2nd ed



Italian poet Alfredo de Palchi has always avoided conformity. As a teenager, he paid a dear price for his fierce individualism: he was imprisoned and tortured by the Communists after World War II in Legnago, a suburb of Verona where he was born in 1926.


"De Palchi's outrage at the gruesome war that surrounded and invaded him cruelly in his youth in Italy at the height of the Second World War found its expression in many syntactically tormented poems which he began to write." David Ignatow



"I was challenged to write poetry in 1946. But I started seriously in 1947, at the age of 20. In the beginning I was not just compelled to write it. I became obsessed. The result was the poetry of The Scorpion's Dark Dance, poetry from 1947 to 1951 [published after more than 40 years from its inception]. This friend told me, 'Write.' So, I pick up and start to write, and as I said, The Scorpion's Dark Dance was the result."



Alfredo de Palchi was born in Verona, Italy, in 1926. Since his 1956 arrival in the United States, he has published four bilingual collections, all with Xenos Books: Sessions With My Analyst (1969), The Scorpion's Dark Dance (1994), Anonymous Constellation (1997), and Addictive Aversions (1999). In 1960, he and Sonia Raiziss joined the then newly-founded literary magazine Chelsea as co-editors, with Sonia acting as Editor until her death in 1994, and de Palchi as a force behind the magazine's growth and development. He currently lives in New York City with his wife Rita and his daughter Luce.