Campana was the wild man of Italian poetry in 1914, on the eve of World War I. The war saved some young Italians from rebellion and Fascism, but not Campana. Always an outsider, he was a vagabond who worked now and then as a gaucho, miner, fireman, organ-grinder, janitor, circus tumbler, horse-groomer, and a wandering musician with a Gypsy band. He died in Castel Pulci, a psychiatric hospital, in 1932.
Pocket Poets Number 54
Dino Campana wrote the unique, visionary masterwork of Italian literature Orphic Songs when he was in his twenties. The originality, rapturous language, and strange beauty of his poetry make him as important to twentieth-century poetry as Garcia...