In forma di parole, edited by Rolando Gualerzi and Gianni Scalia (Subscriptions S32 for 3 issues from: Coop Editoriale Elitropia, via Benedetto Croce 19, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy.)

In forma di parole, the new Italian literary magazine, was recently officially presented in a public debate in the 'Sala di Luca Giordano' of the Medici-Riccardi Palace, Florence, with the poet Mario Luzi and editor Gianni Scalia taking part; Giordano's mythological scenes and his 'Apotheosis of the Medici' providing fitting colour for introducing a magazine of small proportions (14 x 10 cm) but great ambitions.

In forma di parole is, in the words of Luzi, an 'elliptical phrase', something is missing. . . . It reminds one, or has the flavour of, Pasolini's Poesia in forma di rosa, but the unfinished phrase is intentional, to attract the reader inside. What is here, then, 'in the form of words'?

First of all, poetry, and essays on the nature of poetry. Poetry being, according to the presenters, that medium best fitted to express the condensed nature of our deepest thoughts, being the only space left for the creative use of language in a world where both language and its communication have been appropriated by the mass media. The magazine is certainly a 'locus' where thought as intellectual contemplation is highly regarded, in both the critical and the creative senses.

There is, moreover, a timeless quality about the first two issues of the magazine; a feeling ...