Piero Bigongiari's long career in Italian poetry and literary criticism has been characterized by a strong commitment to innovation. It has also been marked by continuous theoretical reflection and awareness of developments within literary culture. These factors have prompted the Tuscan writer to make of his own creative activity the testing ground for extensive intellectual experimentation. Through such a dense dialectic between the theoretical and the creative process, Bigongiari has sought to bring into the heart of his work some linguistic notions derived from poststructuralism--notions capable of producing a poetic spark. He has been especially influenced by concepts generated by the intersection of linguistics and psychoanalysis, as in the ideas of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. This same inclination has brought Bigongiari into contact with the ideas and direction of the new science, as expounded by Ernst Toller and Ilya Prigogine. As a result the semantic nuclei and...