Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-) is one of the youngest of the Futuristic group who has gained enduring fame as a poet. His first volume of verses, "Cavalli Bianchi" ("White Horses"), which was published when he was twenty years old, showed him to be a youth of sensibility and originality, with capacity for tuneful verse and for dainty sentiment daintily expressed. The publication of a second volume, entitled "Lanterna" ("The Lantern"), two years later, fully justified the expectations of those who were attracted by the little gems of his early verse. But it was not until 1909, on the publication of a volume entitled "The Poems of Aldo Palazzeschi," that it was realized that there had come upon the scene a poet who might quite easily get a fame equal to that of Carducci or Pascoli. His poems not only showed the influence of Apollinaire and Marinetti, but also of Whitman, of Mallarmé, of Rimbaud, of Laforgue, and of other French writers. The dyed-in-the-wool critics saw in much of his work clownishness and infantilism, especially in such productions as "E lasciatemi divertire." They thought it should be construed: "And let me divert myself with insane-asylum poetry." They were quite right from their standpoint, but a fellow poet whose emotional mechanism is not so equilibrated as that of the sort of man called normal, would be likely to see in it something of beauty and of merit which the latter could not see, and ask: "Why should not the poet divert himself?" It is to him what exercise is to the average man, and he speaks of it, in fact is proud of it, just as the average man is proud of his golf score when he gets it in that Elysian field, "under ninety." Those who do not see in Palazzeschi's poetry an adhesion to a certain school of philosophy, an advocacy of certain ethical systems, a restatement of others' thoughts and teachings, miss the very essence of his contribution. This is his capacity to present the world around us in colors which, if not new, at least have been recognized only since the advent of the impressionistic painter. So illuminated, it presents facets of beauty that make appeal to that which within us mediates and interprets pleasure. In addition to this, he has an extraordinary sense of the fantastic, the grotesque, the panoplied. His eye is microscopic and his mind is telescopic, and his soul waves tend to a rhythm which is akin to that of genius when he reveals them and describes them to others, as he does, for instance, in the "Villa Celeste" ("The Celestial House"); the average man (who is attuned to interpret some poetic waves) realizes that the soul of this young man is the generating station of genuine poetical energy. He puts a reflector before his soul and it reflects the waves in our direction. "Io metto una lente dinanzi al mio cuore, per farlo vedere alla gente."