Brugnaro, Ferruccio

Portrait of a Woman

Berkeley, CA: CC. Marimbo, 2005. First Printing. Sting-bound in Wrappers. Inscribed, signed, dated, & numbered by Jack Hirschman to Thomas Rain Crowe. “Brugnaro, well-known as a poet and activist who learned his art not from books but from his direct labors as a factory worker for more than 30 years, here gives the lie to the stereotypists of industrial workers as some sort of species of gorilla, brutal and macho and insensitive to the opposite sex. Well, of course, as a long-time revolutionary, Ferrucci had long ago put the question of the inequality of the sexes behind him. But what is new and quite different in this book is the obsessionally specific rendering of the woman, in such a way that he achieves what he has entitled (and in a rather complete way): a portrait that sings off the page with that affirming glow of woman that recovers life in a time when war and death and technological means of destruction are more and more blurring, confusing, if not blinding our abilities simply to see clearly what is often most fundamental to our existence” (from “Translator’s Note” by Jack Hirschman). Ferruccio Brugnaro (b. 1936) was born in Mestre, outside Venice, and spent most of his adult years toiling in the caustic, Pandemonium-esque-machine-and-chemical-suffused hellscape of the factories of his hometown. In the wake of the cataclysmic conditions of World War II, Mestre went through a period of intense, disorganized urban growth. Brugnaro spent nearly 30 years during the apex of this industrial period working in the Montefibre-Montedison complex, while becoming increasingly involved in the militant labor movement, eventually becoming a leading figure in the worker’s movement for 20 years. Because much of his poetry documents his life as a worker, and because he’s a self-declared communist, he is considered one of Italy’s best-known proletarian-poets. Offered today is a 2005 collection of Brugnaro in translation, titled Partial Portrait of Maria and translated by the great Jack Hirschman (1933–2021), Baby Beat Generation titan, and fellow proletarian-poet-extraordinaire. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book, Starting from San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (Item No. 3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (Item No. 1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Chapbook string-bound in wrappers: First Printing, though not explicated as such on copyright page. As the provenance notation above works to intimate, this item is ripe with significant association: as it’s additionally inscribed & signed by the way-leading Literary Leftist to his mentee-&-friend, Thomas Rain Crowe. Hirschman signature, in blue pen ink, reads: “For Tom + Nan, / Comradely, / Jack / Jan. 31, 2005.” Publisher’s limitation, written in pencil just below (& slightly to the right of) Hirschman signature, reads: “70/156.” In fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, light bumping, & some light creasing to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge, otherwise pristine. Fine. [Item #7515]

Price: $45.00