The first, theoretical part of this essay engages a recent publication by Maria Borio, dedicated to Italian poetry from the 1970s to the 1990s. Borio’s volume analyzes some methodological issues, and while she attempts to establish a poetical canon, she also deals with its correlation to a form of ethical and lyrical knowledge. The second part of the essay analyzes the ethical dimension of some choice poetic collections published between the late 1990s and the early 2000s; here, Brancati explores poetry by Antonella Anedda, Franco Buffoni, and Mario Benedetti, in which the need of the lyrical subject to foster a genuine representation of a given experience determines a reformulation of the author’s style.
