ABSTRACT
Poet and writer A high school teacher by profession, Majorino was also the founder of the journal Il Corpo (The Body) as well as a contributor to magazines such as Quaderni piacentini and il verri. His first book of poetry, La capitale, del Nord (The Capital of the North) (1958) showed a propensity for the linguistic experimentation that would continue throughout his work. Yet, following in the tradition of Lombard poetry, his own presence in his work remains thematically secondary to the external world’s social and moral concerns. The collections that followed, Lotte secondarie (Secondary Struggles) (1967) and Sirena (Siren) (1976), reveal in their titles the poet’s progressive disillusionment with a world in which a sense of civic duty and the desire for social change have been lost. In his more cryptic recent work, Majorino, having assessed the impossibility of effecting change through poetry, shifts his attention to his own impending death, as the title of his last two collections, Ogni terzo pensiero (Every Third Thought) (1990) and Tetrallegro (Darkandhappy) (1995) attest. Majorino has also edited an anthology of twentiethcentury poetry titled Poesia e realtà 1945-1975 (Poetry and Reality, 1945-1975) (1977).
