Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni

Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni is the first book-length study in English on Vittorio Sereni (1913-83), one of the major figures of Italian twentieth-century poetry. It looks at how Sereni constructs a new identity for the lyric 'I' through analysing the poet's relationship to landscape (both geographical and poetic), and his dialogue with the Italian poetic tradition, rooted in the notion of desire and a deep-seated preoccupationwith absence and loss. It argues that these facets of Sereni's poetry endow his subject with a psychological and linguistic complexity that earns him a place alongside some of the more experimental figures oftwentieth-century poetry, while reinforcing at the same time his debt to tradition and his vital contribution to the development and adaptation of the lyric form.