Il porto sepolto

These poems, published in Il porto sepolto (1916; “The Buried Port”), used neither rhyme, punctuation, nor traditional form; this was Ungaretti’s first attempt to strip ornament from words and to present them in their purest, most evocative form. Though reflecting the experimental attitude of the Futurists, Ungaretti’s poetry developed…

…his first volume of poems, Il porto sepolto (1916; “The Buried Port”), Ungaretti introduced an intense, purified sort of short lyric, from which punctuation, syntax, and structure had been eliminated to stress the evocative power of individual words. Montale (with Ossia di seppia, 1925; “Cuttlefish Bones”) and later Quasimodo (with…