Emerging in the 1930s from the then-prevalent hermetic school, Vittorio Sereni soon abandoned its solipsistic tendencies for a more personal and realistic approach to writing poetry. As he told interviewer Leone Piccioni: "Non si può fare a meno di tenere conto di un certo grado di dipendenza, inevitabile per la mia generazione, dai cosidetti maestri del nostro inquieto tirocinio, nell'ambito di quella fase che fu detta ermetismo e dalla quale anch'io provengo" (One cannot help taking into account a certain degree of dependence, inevitable for my generation, from the so-called masters of our restless apprenticeship, within that phase that was called hermeticism where I too come from). Several examples of such dipendenza can be found in Sereni's early verse, from the frequent, allusive, and vague use of adjectives to the extenuated rhythm, rich with enjambments. Pursuing the orientation of the Linea lombarda (Lombard Line), the literary-geographic grouping...