This bilingual collection of Aldo Vianello’s poems draws on early translations by Richard Burns from Vianello’s Time of a Flower (1968), with new versions by Peter Jay and Linda Lappin of poems from his later books. Vianello’s exceptional lyric gift and his striking imagery shine through poems about many aspects of the human and natural conditions.

Time of a Flower was Anvil Press’s first title in 1968. It sold out quickly and was praised for the lyrical purity, imagistic concentration and resonance of language – finely mirrored in Richard Burns’s translations – which gave his poems their haunting tone. Anvil decided to celebrate its 40th anniversary with a new collection by Vianello, drawing on that book and supplemented with translations of poems from his many succeeding volumes.