La forma necessaria. Mesa e Eliot

The contribution investigates the influence of Eliot's poetry on the work of Giuliano Mesa. Preliminarily, Mesa's critical writings are considered, with particular attention to the text "Il verso libero e il verso necessario", where the connection between form and ideology is also read in light of Eliot's "Reflections on vers libre". Here, Mesa articulates the concept of 'necessary form', which aims to go beyond the dichotomy between closed metrics and free verse. Secondly, works with explicit relationships to the Eliot model are analysed, in particular: "Da recitare nei giorni di festa", "Quattro quaderni" and "Tiresia". Although starting from modernist assumptions that bring Mesa's poetry closer to the work of the Anglo-American poet, the different treatment of time shows a different relationship between poetry and history.