First published in 1982, In rima e senza brought together all the poetry Giorgio Bassani wished to preserve. The Collected Poems offers anglophone readers for the first time the opportunity to experience his full poetic range. Not only do Bassani's early poems foreshadow key themes of the fiction, such as his classic The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, but his later free verse scrutinizes with a startling directness the life and work of this major Italian writer.

"Everything is connected in Giorgio Bassani's work, everything articulated through the first verses in Poor Lovers' Stories to the last in Epitaph and In Great Secret and through his entire lyrical and narrative production. And yet, there are twists, major fractures, starting with perhaps the most critical and poignant of all, the author's last production in verse, in which Bassani most likely reaches the apex of his artistic expression [...] Welcome back to life, dear Father, welcome back among us!"

-Paola Bassani, from the Foreword