Pasquale Verdicchio teaches literature and film in the department of literature at the University of California-San Diego. As a poet, translator, and essayist, he has published translations of Pasolini, Merini, Caproni, Porta, and Gramsci. He is the author of Devils In Paradise: Writings on Post-Emigrant Cultures and the poetry collection The House Is Past, Passenger: Selected Poems (Porta, Antonio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 2000) and The Wall of the Earth(Caproni, Giorgio and Pasquale Verdicchio, 1992).