A Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: A Discourse on the Role of Poetry in Our Times

Poetry has always come in many forms and shapes and served different purposes. A radical and, quite possibly, irreversible shift occurred in the second half of the Nineteenth Century when the art of poetry began to de-pragmatize and to concern itself mainly with the creation of messages whose cognitive and emotional powers were rooted in the material ingredients and the orchestration of its linguistic medium. The message could only surface if the readers contributed to its manifestation. Examples focusing on both the dictatorial power of language and the role of the reader are drawn from Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Antonella Anedda, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Wallace Stevens, and Amelia Rosselli.