Humanist
Believe it or not, Joseph Tusiani's best-known and largest poetic output is in Latin-- full seven books of it, the last of which, IN NOBIS CAELUM, was published last year in Belgium by the University of Louvain.
Considered by two highly competent magazines, LATINITAS of the Vatican and MELISSA of Zurich "the greatest Latin poet of our time" ("poeta huius aetatis maxime fecundus"}, Tusiani has written more than Catullus, Tibullus, and even Vergil -- a breath-taking production indeed.

Last but not least, Joseph Tusiani has written in Italian a three-volume autobiography, LA PAROLA DIFFICILE, LA PAROLA NUOVA, and LA PAROLA ANTICA, the subject of over ten doctoral dissertations at various European Universities.

Four years ago, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, he was feted in Rome's Campidoglio and Altare della Patria. Also,last year, the City of Florence presented him with its Giglio d'Argento and Le Chiavi della Citta'.

JOSEPH TUSIANI
Poet, Translator, Humanist

Joseph Tusiani

Poet
The first American to win, in 1956, the prestigious Greenwood Prize of the Poetry Society of England, Joseph Tusiani writes in four languages. They are in order of quantity of published verse: Latin, English, Italian, and his own native Apulian dialect.

In 1963, he was one of the thirty-one American poets - from W.H. Auden to William Carlos Williams - selected for the Steuben Glass venture of POETRY IN CRYSTAL, and was invited by President Kennedy to record for the archives of The Library of Congress an ample selection from his first book of verse, RIND AND ALL.

In 1969, for his play in verse, IF GOLD SHOULD RUST, he won the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America, where he served as Vice President under Robert Frost. He was also awarded the "Spirit" Gold Medal of the Catholic Poetry Society of America.

Finally, in 1977, he published GENTE MIA AND OTHER POEMS, now considered a landmark in Italian American literature.

Translator
A colleague and fellow poet, Felix Stefanile, called Joseph Tusiani "a one-man industry". Simply astonishing is the vastness of his translations of Italian classics, from Dante's RIME to Tasso's JERUSALEM DELIVERED, CREATION OF THE WORLD, and Leopardi's CANTI. But he has also translated for the first time Boccaccio's NYMPHS OF FIESOLE and, most especially, Luigi Pulci's MORGANTE, never translated before in five centuries, save for Lord Byron's rendering of the first Canto alone.

His greatest merit, however, is his book THE COMPLETE POEMS OF MICHELANGELO, which, in 1960, introduced to the English-speaking world a completely unknown facet of Michelangelo's genius.

In three voluminous anthologies, still used in our schools, THE AGE OF DANTE, ITALIAN POETS OF THE RENAISSANCE, and FROM MARINO TO MARINETTI, he has translated two-hundred Italian poets, major and minor, from Saint Francis of Assisi to the Futurist Manifesto of 1909.

Worthy of note is his translation of Vittorio Alfieri's L'AMERICA LIBERA, the first public acknowledgment of the American Independence on the part of an Italian poet representing Italy herself. This rare, deluxe edition, titled AMERICA THE FREE, was presented, in 1976, to all members of Congress on behalf of New York's Italian-American Center for Urban Affairs.