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 Lorca or Mayakovsky. 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 from 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.

This vivid presentation of Campana demonstrates why Italian readers have cherished his poems since the first appearance of Canti Orfici in 1914. Charles Wright's translation, Jonathan Galassi's introduction, and, as afterword, Montale's thoughtful essay on Campana, identify the heart of this poet's achievement.