A nomadic and transgressive mode of writing, including the refusal of definitive pauses, constitutes the distinctive trait of Antonio Porta's poetic production. Restless, in constant pursuit of new beginnings and new directions, Porta writes poetry that is, first of all, an assiduous effort to explore the infinite potentialities of language by abandoning the known and determinedly demolishing the hackneyed models of tradition. This experimentation is charged with strong existential tensions. Porta's language inevitably performs a twofold function: in its reflexivity it becomes subject and object of its own operation; but through this self-investigation it moves both inward and outward, penetrating reality and attempting to perceive fragments of authentic knowledge. A dialectic between centripetal direction and centrifugal tension renders Porta's poetry one of the most dynamic and intense poetic expressions of postwar Italy.

Porta's first poems, with those of Alfredo Giuliani, Nanni Balestrini, Edoardo Sanguineti, and Elio Pagliarani, were...