Poetry in the classroom: An introduction to modern Italian poetry

This lecture is to introduce you to a few poems written by three twentieth century Italian poets: Slavatore Quasimodo, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale. You will find these poems in the appendix. You will probably find that the poems are not particularly demanding from a language point of view, but you should be able to follow the words fairly well. What is interesting in these poems is how the pets use words to achieve their purposes and, in fact, to make sense of some of them, we have to go beyond just what the poem says, to what it suggests. Suggestion, in fact, is a very important factor in understanding poetry; sometimes a poet might be actually saying one thing, but by the way he has put the poem together, be suggesting something else. How does he do this? Well, by putting words in certain positions so that they gain especial relevance, by using imagery that gives us a sort of visual reality to what he wants to say, but that may bring in further suggestions, and so on. I feel it is important to bear in mind, right from the start, that this examination of poetry is supposed to be a pleasant exercise. Shelley called reading poetry "travelling in realms of gold", while others have talked about finding the gold in poetry itself. In any case, we should try to think of each poem as a work of art, something that has been put together to form a complete artistic experience.