The muse of Pietro Federico’s most recent collection of poems, La Maggioranza delle Stelle (Most of the Stars), is the United States of America, her people and landscapes. In fifty poems (one for each state), Federico plumbs the depths of the historic, geographic, political, emotional, psychological, and metaphysical realms through a variety of voices of these fifty states. Translated from Italian into English by the author with American poet John Poch, this book is unlike any other collection of poems. Federico is fascinated by the American spirit, to use the words of Giancarlo Pontiggia, "an America made up of stories as raw, rough, endless and inconclusive as the immense landscapes in which they took place." In Most of the Stars the linguistic power of the Italian literary tradition and the contemporary vernacular combine to articulate an idiosyncratic understanding of the New World—the breadth of its cities, its towns, its frontiers and interiors. Federico’s deeply spiritual understanding of our own American personalities and histories offers us a gift of beautiful objectivity. Students of poetry, linguistics, and cultural anthropology will be grateful to Federico and Poch for the wonder offered in this bilingual collection.
