Margherita Guidacci was one of the first among the poets of postwar Italy to abandon the hermetic tradition and find her own path. She did not seek a magic sound in cryptic words but preferred to use words for their concrete value in order to express an idea in finely structured verses. Her inspiration was existentialist and deeply religious. Yet her poems are not prayers in the old tradition; they simply include profound sentiments that derive from a search for regeneration, for a resurrection from death. Guidacci saw life as a passage and death as a means toward resurrection. Therefore all desolation and pain lead to redemption. In her poetry, water is either the nourishing element of life or oblivion, the sea is a means of communicating with the cosmos and with eternity, and sand and dust, elements that change shape constantly like creativity, are symbolic of human...