Their Other Side: Six American Women and the Lure of Italy

“Our lives are Swiss,” Emily Dickinson wrote in 1859, “So still—so cool.” But over the Alps, “Italy stands the other side.” For Dickinson, as for many other writers and artists, Italy has been the land of light, a seductive source of invention, enchantment, and freedom.

So it was for Helen Barolini, who, as a student in Rome after World War II, wrote her first poetry and gave birth to her own creative life, reinvigorating her mother tongue. In this book, Barolini celebrates the lives of…