From Eugenio Montale to Vittorio Sereni, from Giorgio Caproni to Franco Fortini, from Giorgio Orelli to Andrea Zanzotto, this major new collection of essays looks in detail at a substantial cross-section of the most recent Italian poetry, offering an ample selection of essays centred on the verse production of the Sixties and Seventies. The first five essays deal with corporeality and cruelty, the modern city, genre and the neo-avanguardia, the 1970s and poets' use of film. Successive essays focus on single authors, ranging from Montale to Sereni, Caproni to Giorgio Orelli, Zanzotto to Rosselli.