One of the most important poets of Italian neo-avant-garde, Adriano Spatola and his poetic oeuvre has remained in only small and often out of print editions both in Italy and in English language translation, a situation which resulted from his uncompromising belief in his own poetic project and of being a true “Renaissance poet,” one extremely difficult to label: a visual poet, a sound poet, a concrete poet, a linear poet, editor of innovative journals, a refined critic and translator, organizer of historical poetry happenings and founder of his “republic of poetry.”

I had the pleasure to observe him work during the last two years of his life when I was writing my Italian dissertation about his literary journals and helping him to create an archive of experimental poetry at Ca’ Bianca, last of his poetic islands. Now, to honor him in the XXth anniversary of his death, I was asked to work with translator Paul Vangelisti in order to put together a book with all of his work as a linear poet. With the exception of his first collection, in which his impetus toward neo-avant-garde experimentation had not yet been metabolized, that project is now a reality and it is a pleasure to introduce it to all of you.

Adriano Spatola, The Position of Things. Collected poems 1961-1992. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2008.

Beppe Cavatorta

Editor's Note: Beppe Cavatorta edited the collection of poems and wrote an afterword to the volume.