SOURCE: "Prose Glosses: Is Poetry Still Possible?" in Eugenio Montale: Poet on the Edge, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 136-54.

An English journalist, novelist, and critic, West championed equality for women and other liberal political views. In the following excerpt, she studies Montale's prose writings for insights into his thoughts about the function of poetry.

In his career as a journalist Montale wrote innumerable prose pieces, some of which have already been anthologized in Auto da fé and Sulla poesia, others of which have still to be gathered. He has published two collections of short prose: Farfalla di Dinard, which is made up of stories and prose pieces, and Fuori di casa, which consists of his travel pieces….

I should like to concentrate attention on a few texts that are particularly revealing of Montale's poetics and of his beliefs concerning the function and meaning of poetry. These...