Moderna | 2024 | N. 2

The article aims to provide a recognition of Italian poetry in the twenty-first century, highlighting above all the elements of continuity and difference compared to the tradition of the twentieth century, the morphological changes and the most relevant lines of the overall landscape of poetry, which are identified in the primacy of visual perception and space, in a new focus on places and in the development of scenarios of the subject’s foundation. Special attention is given to female voices and subjects.

The essay offers a close-reading of a text by Antonella Anedda published in 1999 in the collection Notti di pace occidentale (Nights of Western Peace). The reading exercise, which also takes into account the macro-textual context, examines the different textual levels, from metrical to linguistic, rhetorical and argumentative to highlight the structure of the composition and its complex organization. The concluding paragraph is devoted to a comparison with a series of texts by Franco Fortini.

The essay sketches a profile of Stefano Dal Bianco’s poetry through his three major books, Ritorno a Planaval (2001), Prove di libertà (2012) and Paradiso (2024). The article will select four aspects of this poetic path, which results peculiar in the Italian poetry landscape of the 2000s : the attitude and relationships of the subject ; the spiritual path ; the poetic form ; and the grounding in spaces, places and landscapes.

The article focuses on the latest books published by the Italian writer Milo De Angelis (1951): Tema dell’addio (Mondadori, 2005), Quell’andarsene del buio nei cortili (Mondadori, 2010), Incontri e agguati (Mondadori, 2015) and Linea intera, linea spezzata (Mondadori, 2021). De Angelis is here considered one of the most important Italian living poets. His poetry is investigated in order to identify its main features and the reasons of his great influence among the contemporaries.

Umberto Fiori’s poetic journey is both uncommon and, in its own way, traditional. The apparent prose-like quality of his verse and his explicit intention to “lose all skills” have often concealed the way in which he has continued and renewed the grand style of twentieth-century Italian poetry. Fiori has thus created his personal lyric voice, thanks in part to his peculiar biography. This voice remains almost obsessively focused on its author, but – for this very reason, paradoxically – can also deal with the estrangement that contemporary existence engenders in all of us.

Starting from the recent translation (2024) of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, and interpreting some of Frasca’s choices as a translator, the essay focuses on Rimi, the central and major part of the eponymous book of verses published in 2013, showing how the text is a reprise, a reconsideration and a profound reworking of the poetics elaborated by Frasca in the 1980s, the decade of his debut ; and suggests reading the finale of Rimi in the light of Frasca’s studies on Samuel Beckett.

This article is dedicated to Fabio Pusterla’s series of texts entitled Cenere, o terra, included in the collection of poems of the same name, published by Pusterla in 2018. In particular, the article analyzes the seventh text in the series and its relationship with a key figure in Pusterla’s education, Swiss poet and intellectual Giovanni Orelli (1928-2016). Special attention is devoted to intertextuality, involving Orelli himself; Dante, from whom Pusterla extracts the very title of his collection ; and finally Arthur Rimbaud, whose lyric L’eternité is explicitly quoted.

This paper analyses Enrico Testa’s poetry, focusing on his works published from the beginning of the century to the present, in the light of his most recent book (Pietre di sosta, 2024) and its statements on poetics. The discussion considers – synchronically – the peculiar form of post-lyric subjectivity, together with the main themes of Testa’s poetry and its approach to the anthropological dimension of ritual and prayer, albeit against a background of absolute immanence. The paper then traces a brief diachronic journey that touches upon Testa’s various books of poetry, to center more deeply on L’erba di nessuno (2023). Finally, it addresses the question of Testa’s linguistic-stylistic choices, to describe their salient features.

The essay traces the profile of Patrizia Valduga with particular attention to the poetry-translation relationship and to the theoretical background that supports some of her choices also in prose. The summary of her itinerary between 2000 and 2020 presents a portrait of a woman already well known and appreciated who, even after the death of Giovanni Raboni, continued to work tirelessly in his name and with valuable results.

This annotated bibliography offers a selective overview of Italian poetry in the 2000s, balancing critical-anthological works proposing potential canons with historiographical-theoretical studies outlining emerging interpretative frameworks. The selection highlights key anthologies and monographs reflecting generational, thematic, and formal trends. Central themes include lyricism, the crisis of subjectivity, and the influence of digital media. The resulting picture emphasizes the diversity of voices and theoretical perspectives, suggesting an open, dynamic state of Italian poetry that resists rigid categorization.