One aspect of this week’s lecture that struck me was how much the work of the Italian poets in the 1960s reflected the time they were living in. Their poetry contained a lot of post-apocalyptic imagery, a response to the fear of the nuclear age. I think it is interesting to compare the works of these Italian poets in the 1960s and 70s to the Futurists from earlier in the century. I think the primary difference between the Neo-Avantgarde poets and the Futurists is that the latter rejected the importance of nature. The later group embraced naturalistic imagery in their mission to critique the atomic era.
The poem we analyzed contained lots of natural imagery, but it was coupled with imagery about death, decay, and destruction. Although I was very confused by the poem, I was able to pick out words that related to these various themes. I think it is interesting that the poem contained so many technical words. I am not sure if the poem was meant to be purposefully inaccessible in that sense or whether the jargon was simply related to the aforementioned themes. Although it was confusing, the poem did encapsulate some of the ideas that the poets were trying to convey.