Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti's poetry expresses the dynamics of the Italian cultural scene of the last thirty years. As a literary critic and poet, he has enjoyed serious attention since 1960, when Astrazione e realtà (Abstraction and Reality), his first theoretical book, and La voce roca (The Raucous Voice), a collection of early poems, were published. Poetry is for Bàrberi Squarotti the "Other" opposed to social and phenomenological reality; it is an instrument for proclaiming personal liberty and knowledge in the horrid world of history. In Poesia italiana del Novecento (1986) Elio Gioanola has appropriately called the poetry of Bàrberi Squarotti "una tipica poesia 'indiretta,' che cerca i suoi referenti non nella realtà esterna e psicologica ma nello specchio della letteratura e della coscienza come deposito di simboli" (a typical "indirect" poetry, which finds its correspondences not with external or psychological reality...