A regular and highly visible presence in the frenetic world of Italian culture, Giovanni Raboni is one of the leading exponents of the Italian school of poetry loosely known as the Linea lombarda (Lombard Line), which emerged in the early 1950s as part of the explosive resurgence in postliberation cultural activity that Raboni has referred to as "una chiamata alla poesia" (a call to poetry). Drawing on a rich tradition of Lombardian enlightenment and progressive thinking, stretching back at least as far as Alessandro Manzoni, Giuseppe Parini, and Cesare Beccaria, the poets of the Linea Lombarda--Nelo Risi, Luciano Erba, Giorgio Orelli, Bartolo Cattafi, Elio Pagliarani, and Giancarlo Majorino--were among the first to challenge the primacy of the role hermeticism had played in Italian poetry and culture of the pre-and immediate post-World War II years. Hermeticism and, to a lesser extent, the poetry wing of neorealism, dismissed by Raboni...