
Francini relates how she came to translate Yusef Komunyakaa's poetry. Among other things, he says that Komunyakaa's luxuriant contemporary speech modulated by blues and jazz, his imaginative movements grafted onto recognizable historical and political political issues, and his direct unfolding of emotions that make him different from any Italian poet. The challenge for an Italian translator of Komunyakaa's poetry is to imagine and construct an appropriate language for transmitting to Italian readers the rhythm of the many emotions his poetry conveys to the English ear.