"Today the few true critics [of poetry] know that they act without theoretical foundations or public legitimacy," says Alfonso Berardinelli.

That criticism lacks public legitimacy, there are few doubts, but that all criticism is devoid of "theoretical foundations" can be doubted in the light of twenty years of work by the magazine "Atelier".

And then we must ask ourselves what is the task of poetry within an "emporiocentric" culture, incardinated in a society in which man is reduced to "consumer machine", whose need must be continuously reactivated and realized, and what is the function of the mass media, now almost completely aligned with the logic of the "market". Has the poetic tradition of Homer been interrupted in our day? Does poetry still conquer "a thousand centuries silence"?

To these questions, the speakers of the two conferences, the first at Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence on 6 February 2017 and the second at the "Sormani" Library of Milan on 12 April 2018, opened a series of perspectives.

Their contribution has certainly not solved all the problems, but represents a real junction in the awareness of the issue on the part of those who work in the field of contemporary poetry.