Lights of Rome

Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964) was a poet, painter, art critic, and cultural mediator between Florence and Paris. In his radically original early work, he experimented with cubist writing, “parole in liberta,” and typography, culminating in the 1919 volume BÏF§ZF+18: Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms.

Olivia E. Sears is founder of the Center for the Art of Translation and the journal Two Lines, which she edited for more than a decade. Poems from her translation of Ardengo Soffici’s entire 1919 collection appear or are forthcoming in the Literary Review, Poetry International, and Jubilat.