Drawn States of Mind (Sun and Moon Classics)

Giuseppe Steiner joined the ranks of the Italian Futurist movement during World War I, and contributed freeword poetry to a variety of Futurist journals. His first book, La Chitarra del fante ("The Infantryman's Guitar"), was published in 1920. But in the years following Steiner abandoned the Marinettian project of "words-in-freedom" because he felt that verbal poetry was inherently limited, due to the inadequate expressive potential of words. Pushing Marinetti's work, Steiner first experimented with "syllables-in-freedom"; and when these also seemed unmanageable he turned away from verbal expression altogether. In Drawn States of Mind Steiner presented twenty of his visual poems. Including his original essay and an introduction by translator Guy Bennett, this publication documents one of the most radical positions taken in Italian Futurist literature, revealing what a poetry beyond language might look like.