Mario Luzi (1914-2005), was one of the most prominent Italian poets of the second half of the 20th century. Having begun his career in the “hermetic” vein of mid-century Italian verse, he moved towards greater realism, social concern, and informal language in his middle years before entering the “metaphysical” phase of his later career, when the Christian inflections of his earlier work give way to a more generalized gnosticism with an eye still on a rapidly changing Italian society. The poems here presented are from the start of this last phase.
