In 1911, two years after Marinetti spawned Futurism, the all-but-unknown Umberto Saba (1883–1957) wrote his own manifesto, which sadly never had the impact of Marinetti’s; it remained unpublished until after Saba’s death. His tract, titled “What Remains for Poets to Do,” begins with typical directness: “It remains for poets to make poetry honest.”

Today, when much poetry seems merely honest, it may be difficult to appreciate Saba’s prescription. But Italian poetry was emerging from the decadentismo of Gabriele d’Annunzio, who could falsify “passions and admirations … for the sole wretched end of gaining a more striking stanza or a more resonant line.” Saba’s charge mirrors Auden’s indictment of his younger self for espousing in “Spain” a “wicked doctrine … simply because it sounded to me rhetorically effective.”

The Italian avant-garde in ...

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