‘This exhibition, focused on poetry and consequently on an event in itself incompatible with the concept of exhibition, wishes to represent an “open space” where poetry can happen and give its contribution to the Meeting. Who is man? where does he originate from and what sense is there behind his actions, conscious and unconscious, awkward and clumsy, or limpid and clear-cut? What is the purpose of his rushing, of his depressions and his recoveries? Why does he continue to follow the ghosts of the mind or the innermost folds of sentiment and imagination? What is the purpose of his struggle for life? The inexorable recovery and impossibility, penalty an extremely violent act of censure or destruction, of silencing his original impetus of truth and good, often the excruciating anguish of good not yet experimented, but longed for? It is hard to try and describe all this through the fixed and schematic form of an exhibition. That is why the choice of poetry is the possible event of an encounter between waiting man and a glimmer of hope offered to him, an opening onto reality, the possibility of a meeting space with human beings who wait, sense, recognise. Some major books of twentieth-century Italian poetry carry titles that echo those of the Meeting: from Salvatore Quasimodo’s homonymous “Life is not a dream” to “Reality beats dreaming” by Carlo Batocchi. After all, the theme of “realism” has been a source of keen debate between major exponents of Italian poetry for the past 50 years (eg., the debate between Pasolini, neo avant-garde and Luzi). Some of the texts presented show the experience of youth which changes shape and substance, but renews and restores the excitement of exploring the ultimate consistency of reality; so that man is not a “stranger” passing amid the things of life, of his own life. The experience of a gap kept open by a winning presence. Emptiness and foreignness that prevents delay and prompts following and feeding the gap which perforates reality. Other texts on the other hand, show the retreat of the lonely individual, who expects nothing more, for whom time is a hostile and unforgiving enemy, slow and inexorable, yet unable to refrain from crying out. Other texts still present the experience of a concrete carnal and spiritual presence, that offers a secure and safe hand which anyone can grip to walk faster, to walk freer and be saved. Finally, the experience of one’s ephemeral image within the cosmic and immortal order of things; the experience of the pain and tragedy of one’s own life. These and other experiences are presented to man who searches and waits and is not satisfied with only viewing life as it appears. This exhibition is therefore a “possible” space and not a museum, a place where visitors can take part in a poetical event, the place of a possible encounter that has not already occurred.’