Mixing Italian and English in my poems (and everyday speech) feels natural and necessary with certain audiences. This is how I communicate with others and myself. Early drafts of my poems often have more Italian words than later drafts. The editing process is where I work to identify audience, offer definitions through context or direct definitions in the poems or through a Notes section and consider the audience. I make choices, including how to format the non-English words in my otherwise English language poems, and work to be both precise and suggestive in my choices.
I took my first Italian language class more than thirty years ago as an undergraduate at Smith College. I wanted to learn how to pronounce “mozzarella,” since everyone in my Italian-American family pronounced it with the emphasis on different syllables or dropped syllables. I almost failed the intensive, year-long class, but I eventually learned my family’s heritage language. I have spent years working and living in Italy, which led to my naturally weaving the language into my primarily English language poems.Those college classes set the stage for a fascination with grammar and an integration of both my first and second languages, depending on the audience.
When I studied abroad in Florence my junior year, and later worked for NYU in Florence, we developed a sort of mixed language among ourselves. We’d switch between languages during a conversation, sometimes even within an individual sentence. Some words just work better in one language than another. And the communities were mostly bilingual, at least within certain sets of vocabulary, so it worked for communication. This is similar to the commonly named “Spanglish,” combining both Spanish and English, or “code-switching,” depending on audience.
This learned second language feels like both a familial tie and a private language at times. Italian is, for me, an earned language that I worked so hard to comprehend, even if I still make mistakes. Early drafts of my poems are sometimes completely in Italian (especially if I’m drafting somewhere close to someone who might read over my shoulder but probably doesn’t read Italian). Other times I’ll drift into Italian or use a word or two, as I did when I was living in those bilingual communities. I can pronounce “mozzarella” as the Italians do on television and feel more confidence in my reading, speaking and writing skills.
While we spend some time in Italy each year for work, I’m otherwise living in a primarily English language community in the United States. I often find myself wanting to say certain words in Italian and then needing to explain them, which feels alienating. I feel at home, if that makes sense, hearing Italian, especially certain accents (the aspirated accent of the Tuscans, where I’ve spent most of my time, or the more vowel-heavy sounds of the southerners, as my distant relatives speak.)
Some of the decisions I make regarding when to use certain words are emotional and others are aesthetic, strategic or craft-oriented. My reaction to these languages, and accents or dialects, feels deeply personal. It is hard to untie these reactions from the later aesthetic choices.
Each usage in a poem poses the question of how, when or if to define a word. Here are some options:
- It doesn’t need to be translated because the intended audience speaks Italian.
- It stands on its own without translation because it is a commonly used word in English.
- The word is a close cousin to a known Spanish word, which is more commonly used.
- I don’t translate the word because I hope that the reader is willing to do some work.
- The word is translated through context.
- The word is in the title as a definition poem (which I call Vocabulary poems.)
- The word is further explained in the notes.
What does this choice mean for which audience? Who is welcome into the poem? Who is asked to do the work of translating or looking up a word if necessary? What community is formed through the chosen vocabulary in the poem and who is left out? I think I am mostly thinking of writing for someone who has spent some time in Italy and/or wants to learn about the language and culture.
In my second full-length poetry collection, Perforated (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026), I sometimes define a word in the poem and elsewhere. For example, in this poem, “Ars Poetica or Pesca Tabacchiera,” I also added additional Notes in the end, “The “Pesca Tabacchiera” is a flat peach, sometimes called a “donut peach.” The direct translation from Italian is “snuffbox peach.” While the peach was defined in the poem, I really liked the various names it has. This poem was first published in Poet Lore (Winter 2024):
Ars Poetica or Pesca Tabacchiera
Young, I didn’t kiss & tell, but I wanted to. Especially after the first time. I wanted to ask friends if they felt the same here, there.
I still don’t describe those touches, people, the light and shadows. I write around the center.
It’s that Italian flat peach the merchant offers in a paper bag. He recommends a particular cheese from the next stall, points with a nod while watching your eyes find it.
Is the poem the peach you are about to eat while sitting on a curb in
the shade?
Or is it you, holding a peach pit wrapped in paper?
I have a series of poems that I call “Vocabulary poems” that span my three books (and my current manuscripts.) These poems define a word or phrase through the poem, as Definition poems do. Sometimes the poems are English Vocabulary or Italian Vocabulary poems. When I learned Italian, I started to feel a certain distancing from English, which has pushed my poems in different directions.
There are options for how to format the Italian words in the otherwise English-language poem. One might:
- Italicize the non-English Words
- Define a word through context
- Define a word directly in the poem
- Add an epigraph, footnote or endnote
- Offer more details in the Notes section separate from the poems
I will often put the Italian words into italics when the words are in either the title or the body of the poem and italicize them. This can create issues if there is dialogue or other reasons to italicize within the poem. My goal is to work to be consistent throughout a poem or group of poems or, later, a book.
My first full-length book, Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) is a lyric memoir about a miscarriage and postpartum depression following a successful pregnancy. There is a Resources section at the end which I modeled after the resources following Meghan O’Rourke’s memoir The Long Goodbye (Penguin, 2021.) Because of these resources, I did not include additional Notes.
In Perforated, I did include a Notes section with some definitions and additional information. Without a resources section, it felt as though there was room to share more about the poems, but separate from the poems. For me, this space between the poems and the Notes (as opposed to foot or end notes) allows the poems to exist as just poems but still provide additional information if desired.
This issue of Notes and Resources comes back to the issue of the intended audience and, perhaps, how much work (research) a reader might be willing to do or the author is asking the reader to do. I hope that my poems offer enough context that most readers can access any of the poems on some level, and then there’s an additional level of connection for those who might speak Italian or feel compelled to do the so-called “work” of looking something up.
In the poem “Italian vocabulary lullaby: Tutto” in Viable, I don’t italicize the repeated Italian word, “tutto,” but I do define it through context. I decided against italics because it felt excessive with the word repeated eleven times:
Italian Vocabulary Lullaby: Tutto
ten weeks old
We are all together.
Tutti.
Mommy’s here.
Daddy’s here.
You’re here.
We’re all together.
Tutti, tutti, tutti.
You have everything you need.
Tutto.
You have food to eat.
You have clothes to wear.
You have a home.
You have everything you need.
Tutto, tutto, tutto.
Tutti, tutto, tutti.
Everything, singular and plural.
I think I learned basic English grammar concepts in Italian language college classes. I’m sure we did this directly for English when I was in grade school, but perhaps it took the later repetition to fully learn the material. I think that the distance of a second language helped to clarify my understanding of my first language. As I started to notice how English was constructed, from the grammar through the vocabulary. For example, I remember learning the word for “key chain” which was just about an exact translation. I laughed, thinking it was so obvious, until I suddenly realized it was the same in English. I hadn’t noticed the English word because I had been so used to it. The distancing from my first language served my infatuation with language.
In “English Vocabulary: To Mourn” (Perforated) I turn the focus on English. I bring this up in this discussion because I think the sort of othering of a second language can then be turned to English to equalize them. This poem was first published by Calyx (Spring 2024). There is also an audio recording of my reading this poem available on their website.
English Vocabulary: To Mourn
When my great aunt lifted herself from her chair,
thudded onto her cousin’s coffin, and wailed,
I knew one day I’d fail her in my grief.
Years later, at her funeral, my cries turned
to hacking coughs. A cousin said
I’d ruined the funeral. Maybe I did.
I apologized, sucked on the acidic lozenge
she’d held out. What if mourning is my engine?
The engine of condensed time, sound almost
muted, just a whir, behind the t-shirt and jeans.
My hands do what is expected—answer
emails, wash dishes—instead of reaching
down to thump on the dirt or dig.
The earth waits. The engine whirs, here
and not braided together. It revs at night,
loud enough to crack foundation
until the deep waters reach sea-level:
Equilibrium. My son puts his head underwater,
snaps his fingers, listens for the muffled sounds.
He lifts his head, Can you hear the sea?
Any language and its usage will carry culture with it. As an Italian-American, I think a lot about American, Italian and Italian-American identities. There are four broad cultures: that of Italians in Italy, Italians living here in America, Americans living abroad in Italy and Italian-Americans. Of course, there are many smaller cultures, centered on geography, history and timing of migration and more.
Italian-American dialect is filled with words used by those whose families (like mine) came in the 1800s. These words are versions of those from southern dialects that changed with usage (thus the question of how to pronounce “mozzarella.”) Many of the immigrants who came were illiterate, and the words weren’t, as my aunt Dora would call them, the “high-class Italian language.”
I think a lot about all that is suggested in a word when I try my hand at translation. For example, I remember trying to translate an Emily Dickinson poem that had a moccasin, but when I tried to describe the shoe in Italian, I both needed too many words and couldn’t easily bring in the reference to American Indian identity and history.
When an Italian word or phrase remains in a poem after a few drafts, it usually does one of a few things:
- The word works to connect cultures, experiences and maybe time periods.
- The word expands meaning since it is different from a known English word.
- The word works to suggest something outside of the word itself to a reader who understands the context.
Another question is whether the reader can hear the sounds even if they don’t understand the words or will they mispronounce the words. One might choose to offer a phonetic pronunciation or perhaps use a rhyme scheme that suggests vowel sounds.
In Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books 2021), my poem “Italian Vocabulary: Gravidanza,” builds on the suggestion of the English word “grave” to mean serious in the Italian word, “gravidanza” for pregnancy. This slant rhyme helps to both offer double-meaning and understanding. This poem was first published in Minerva Rising Literary Journal (2013.)
Italian Vocabulary: Gravidanza
Gravity of pregnancy,
graveness of miscarriage,
lack of a grave
since nothing is here
anymore.
When we were discussing our ideas for the panel at the Writer’s Center this spring, poet Sara R. Burnett brought up some good questions about power. Italy, like many countries, has a number of sometimes contradicting myths surrounding it. For the Italian-Americans, most of us grew up hearing both about how wonderful the “old country” was, but also how hard our people worked to leave it. Meanwhile, it is always fetishized with movies and books like Under the Tuscan Sun (there’s a great counter-book by an Italian tour guide titled Too Much Tuscan Sun.) And of course there’s the mafia that is glorified in movies.
I feel that my responsibility is to show that Italy, Italians, and Italian-Americans are real places and people that are imperfect and wonderful and awful as all groups of people are. Of course, immigrants were mistreated when they first arrived here, as were perhaps all groups of immigrant communities, but now Italian Americans are classified as white and benefit from much privilege.
I write to understand things better, untangle questions and highlight moments of awe. For me, weaving a second language into my first language poems helps me to address certain issues. For your own writing, I encourage you to experiment with language and grammar as a way to offer ideas, beauty and questions to your intended audience. There are many choices and options that can work. Who knows, maybe your audience will be wider than you first imagined.
Chloe Yelena Miller is the author of Perforated (2026) and Viable (2021), both out from Lily Poetry Review Books. A series of English and Italian Vocabulary poems span both books. She is a co-founder of Brown Bag Lit, an online writing community, where she teaches poetry workshops. She also offers classes through Politics and Prose, New Directions in Writing and privately. www.chloeyelenamiller.com