In Italy, Patrizia Cavalli is as beloved as Szymborska is in Poland, and if Italy were Japan she’d be designated a national treasure. Any hall she has ever read her poetry in is invariably filled to the gills. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben said of Cavalli that she has written “the most intensely ‘ethical’ poetry in Italian literature of the twentieth century.” One could add that it is also the most sensual and comical. My Poems Won’t Change the World, published this fall by Farrar Straus & Giroux, is her first substantial American anthology, and this rare appearance, together with her illustrious translators is not to be missed.