Italian Poetry Review (IPR) is a plurilingual journal of creativity and criticism. It is part of a large cultural program based at Columbia University, both in the Italian Department and at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America.
Printed mostly in English and Italian, IPR is the first journal in the United States dedicated to the critical diffusion of Italian poetry in a broad comparative context: it constantly compares the Italian and the American situations of poetry, and it fosters a dialogue between poetry and prose (critical, narrative and dramatic), as well as between poetry and “texts” from the non-verbal arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, design, etc. Finally, IPR publishes monographic supplements, which amount to full-fledged books. A typical issue of IPR is articulated in various sections: “Poems”, “Voices” (poetic texts from non-canonical authors), “Translations”, “Between Prose and Poetry” (prose poems, intensely written short stories, one-act plays, etc.), “Poetology and Criticism” (scholarly essays on poetry), and “Reviews” (dedicated to volumes originally written in Italian, as well as to poetic translations from and into Italian), and “Books Received”. Occasionally, IPR also publishes “Inquiries” into topics on poetry. IPR is interested in all periods of Italian poetry.
IPR aims at establishing a dialogue between academic and non-academic readers of poetry. The review looks at Italian literature as a global italophone literature from the historical origins to hyper-contemporary work, interacting with other literary languages both in- and outside of Italy. IPR is not a “rivista di tendenza”, and it is experimenting rather than experimental. Its notion of poetics is unabashedly “mixed”, being equally interested in the vatic/orphic notion of poetry and the post-avant-garde one, in the sacred and the profane aspects of poetry, and being equally attentive to the figure of poet as social agent and as solitary wanderer, freely moving between the roles of spiritual witness and mundane observer. IPR is situated at the nexus of poetry and politics, but pays equal respect to the proudly autonomous position in poetry.
It is obvious that the world of poetry is larger than any single journal; it is less obvious and therefore more interesting that poetry is only a part of the general phenomenon of poiesis, that is, creativity in general, in the sense that poiesis is almost coextensive with life (the Futurists’ notion as arte-vita is also relevant here). It is clear then that IPR’s position is a comprehensive, not an eclectic one, because it is based on a strong idea of poetry.