Poet, born in Perugia, Umbria, C Italy. In a clear style infused with melancholy and sensuality, he sharply captured the present moment with epigrammatic lyrics on homosexual love in Poesie (1939), Una strana gioia di vivere (1956), Stranezze (1976), and Confuso sogno (1980).
Biography
Born in Perugia, Penna lived in Rome for much of his life.
His affection for boys was reflected by the constant presence of young boys in his verses, as well as in his taking a fourteen years old streetboy from Rome, Raffaele, nicknamed "Culo zozzo" ("Dirty ass"), to the home he shared with his mother in 1956 and living with him, on and off, for fourteen years. According to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Penna's poetry was made of "an extremely delicate material of city places, with asphalt and grass, whitewashed walls of poor houses, white marbles of the bridges, and everywhere the sea's breath, the murmur of the river in which the trembling night lights reflect".
His controversial erotic love poems can be found in English translation in This Strange Joy (Ohio State University Press, 1982) and Remember me, God of Love (Carcanet, 1993).
An epigram of Penna's about the dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Raffaele, scribbled on the back of his portrait by Tano Festa, reads
Sandro Penna died in Rome in 1977.
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