SOURCE: A review of It Depends: A Poet's Notebook, in a radio broadcast on KUSC-FM,—Los Angeles, CA, March 11, 1981.

Kessler is an American educator, poet, short story writer, translator, and screenwriter. In the following excerpt from the transcript of a radio broadcast, he states that Montale is more "outspoken and direct" in It Depends: A Poet's Notebook than in his previous works.

We have still among us today the great Italian poet, Engenio Montale, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975. And, perhaps it's not surprising that he continues to produce poetry that is full of interest and power, although he keeps changing its qualities and its direction. Not surprising, because of the nature of this great poet. Ever since his first book came out in 1925, Montale's most recurrent theme has been the mediation of our present lives, that is, our personal identities, by our links to...