Early poetry by Leonardo Sinisgalli seems typical of the hermetic school of Italian poetry, and in view of his characteristic commitment to free verse, his emphasis on metaphor, and his tendency to objectify and to avoid adjectives, he has been seen as one of the more extreme of that group. The delicate interplay of his images and his delight in epigrammatic situations bring to mind Greek and Oriental poetry; and he shares important similarities with his more immediate antecedents as well--demonstrating the sensitivity of Giovanni Pascoli and the crepuscolari (twilight poets) on one hand, and the elliptical and evocative tendencies of Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry on the other. Sinisgalli's canny ability to forage in his rural southern past for the seeds of poetry; his technical training, which allowed him to use mathematics as a source of fantasy; and his remarkable capacity to...