Hard Bread

The poems in this volume are 'spoken' in the imagined voice of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. While much of the poetry is based on Ginzburg's life - her upbringing in Turin, her experience of Fascism and her work as a writer- the rest is pure imagining and invention.

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The poems in Peg Boyers's Hard Bread are "spoken" in the imagined voice of the Italian writer, Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991). While much of the book is based on Ginzburg's life - her upbringing in Turin; her brief marriage to the resistance activist, Leone Ginzburg; her experience of Fascism and war; her work as novelist, playwright, editor, and newspaper columnist; her embattled friendships with writers like Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ernest Hemingway, and Cesare Pavese - much is invented. The result is a book by turns melancholy and acerbic, mournful and satiric, contemplative and combative.