Edoardo Sanguineti, 79, Italian poet whose playful language marked ’60s literary scene, dies
By APTuesday, May 18, 2010
Edoardo Sanguineti, Italian poet, 79, dies
ROME — Cultural figures in Italy are mourning the death of Edoardo Sanguineti, a poet and critic whose playful use of language made him an important neo-avant-garde writer on the 1906s literary scene.
Doctors at a Genoa hospital said Sanguineti, 79, died Tuesday morning following emergency surgery for an abdominal aneurysm.
In the early 1960s, he helped found the “Gruppo 63″ in which poetry explored what he considered the “dissolution” of daily language.
President Giorgio Napolitano recalled how he knew Sanguineti when the two were Communist lawmakers from 1979-1983. State TV said Sanguineti called himself “the last Marxist.”
Feltrinell, the publisher that handled much of Sanguineti’s work, hailed him as a conscience of our time and craftsman of language.
(This version CORRECTS age to 79 throughout.)
