SOURCE: Wells, Will. “Pound and Ungaretti: A Resonating Silence.” Paideuma 24, no. 2-3 (fall-winter 1995): 69-77.

In the following essay, Wells discusses the influence that Ezra Pound had on the poetic career of Ungaretti.

Giuseppe Ungaretti and Ezra Pound did not establish personal contact until the late 1950s, by which time both had achieved a reasonably final form in poetic practice. Nonetheless, collectively, these poets and their works have continued to exert substantial influence upon the development of virtually all major new voices in Italian poetry over the subsequent four decades. Given the particular veneration in which The Cantos are held by contemporary Italian poets, it is even arguable that Pound has usurped the mantle which Ungaretti had assumed for himself—to revolutionize the diction, gesture and aesthetics of Italian verse. Yet considering the complete trajectories of their poetic careers, a clear resonance is readily detectable. Though the question of...