Edoardo Sanguineti (1930 - 2010) was born in Genoa where he was for many years Professor of Italian Literature. His many awards and distinctions include the prestigious Premio Campiello for lifetime achievement. The most important poet of the avant-garde Gruppo 63 movement (which included Umberto Eco and Giorgio Manganelli), Sanguneti was also the translator of poetry by Joyce, Shakespeare, Brecht and a number of Latin and Greek writers. In addition to poems he wrote two novels, Capriccio Italiano / Italian Caprice (1963), and Il Giuoco dell'Oca / Snakes and Ladders (1967), as well as a number of plays; but it is as the author of playful, even exuberantly inventive poems that he is best known. Libretto was first published in 1998 and was his first book-length appearance in the English language.