Mario Montalbetti has spent his life studying poems: he has tried to clarify their purpose, why we pay less attention to them than to novels, and what causes the pleasure we derive from not fully understanding their verses. The seven essays in this volume, arranged thematically and chronologically, bring together the author's wit, audacity, and the development of his personal ideas over time: he deciphers a poem from the design of a table and exposes the structure of language; he compares the earth's relief with psychological depth and discovers a relationship between geography and literature; he uses basic theological principles to discuss the creative and redemptive spirit of poets; he explains in verse the difference between words and things; and he argues for the importance of a poetry without national labels. Each text explores a different area while expanding on the rest. It's as if Montalbetti had dedicated his years of writing to inventing artifacts that dialogue with each other, but all of them were pointing toward a general proposition: that in the broken, fragmentary, "searching without finding anything" nature of verse, lies something essential about the inner world of people.

"Silence is part of language. Not only the silences between words, or between phrases, or the intertextual pauses, or the blank spaces in the layout, but even the silence after the poem... is part of language. Because only with these silences can we balance what is said, offer it a counterweight. The problem with talking too much is that we try to avoid or postpone the indispensable counterweight that silence offers to what is said." —Mario Montalbetti