Paolo Valesio
Born in Bologna 1939, Paolo Valesio earned the “Laurea in Lettere” at the University of Bologna (1961), and then the “Libera Docenza in Glottologia” (1969). After a period of assistantship at the University of Bologna (1961-2, 1966-8), and a period of research and teaching at Harvard University (1963-6, 1968-73), Valesio became Associate Professor of Italian Studies at New York University (1973-5); he was then named Professor of Italian Language and Literature at Yale University where he taught from 1975 to the summer of 2004 and served for many years as Chair of the Italian Department. Having retired from Yale as Emeritus Professor, Valesio transferred to the Department of Italian of Columbia University to occupy the “Giuseppe Ungaretti Chair in Italian Literature.”
Paolo Valesio has been visiting professor at: University of California at Santa Cruz, Stanford University, Brown University, Università della Calabria, University of Arizona, Universidad de São Paulo, University of Alberta at Edmonton, Università di Venezia, Università della Basilicata, Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Johns Hopkins University, City University of New York, the University Institute “Suor Orsola Benincasa” in Naples, etc. He has taught seminars at: Syracuse University in Florence, “Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici” in Naples, “Istituto Hesperia” (Spoleto and Rome), “Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani di Recanati,” Università di Roma at Tor Vergata, Università di Macerata, etc.
Valesio has been a Fellow of the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University; and he has been Honorary President of the American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS).
He has founded and coordinated from 1993 to 2004 the “Yale Poetry Group.” He founded (1997) and has been directing the journal Yale Italian Poetry (YIP) which he has now transferred to the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, under the new title of Italian Poetry Review.
He is the American correspondent of the journal Poesia in Milan, and he contributes to several literary and artistic journals. Paolo Valesio has also contributed to Italian dailies (Il Manifesto, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Giornale), and he is currently contributing to Il Foglio. Valesio has written several hundred essays, articles, poems, and short stories. He has published four books of criticism: Strutturedell’allitterazione (1968), Novantiqua (1980), Ascoltareilsilenzio (1986), and Gabriele d’Annunzio: The Dark Flame (1992); and a critical-narrative essay, Dialogo coi volanti (1997).
He is the author of: two novels, L’ospedale di Manhattan (1978) and Il regno doloroso (1983); a collection of short stories, S’incontrano gli amanti (1993); and one novella, Tradimenti verde (1987). Paolo Valesio has published fourteen books of poetry: Prose in poesia (1979), La rosa verde (1987), Dialogo del falco e dell’avvoltoio (1987), Le isole del lago (1990), La campagna dell’ Ottantasette (1990), Analogia del mondo (1992, winner of the prize “Città di San Vito al Tagliamento”), Nightchant (1995), Sonetos profanos y sacros (Italian original and Spanish translation, 1996), Avventure dell’Uomo e del Figlio (1996), Anniversari (1999), Piazza delle preghiere massacrate (1999, winner of the prize “DeltaPOesia”), Dardi (2000), Every Afternoon Can Make the World Stand Still / Ogni meriggio può arrestare il mondo (Italian original and English translation, 2002), and Volano in cento (Italian original, Spanish and English translations, 2002). Among other activities, Paolo Valesio is currently at work on the composition of five different but connected diaristic novels which together constitute a Pentalogia which has now reached fifteen-thousand manuscript pages, and which is still unpublished save for some excerpts in periodicals.