[Where] does Quaderno di quattro anni come exactly, in Montale's oeuvre? That inevitably raises the larger question—how is the whole course of his poetry to be seen? The invitation (temptation) to see it in its entirety has now been formally presented with the publication … of Tutte le poesie. (This volume faithfully reproduces the six individual collections in their order of appearance.) … [It would seem that Quaderno di quattro anni is one more medley of "mixed bags"]; four years' jottings after two years of diary notes. Desultory verse.

That description would quite misrepresent the new book and the two that preceded it. Today it is very clear: we have been slow on the uptake; the error was in our reading. What Montale has been giving us since La bufera e altro is not further individual, autonomous collections, but the parts, the canti, roughly, of his long free poem...