Eugenio Montale (Italian: [euˈdʒɛːnjo monˈtaːle]; 12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature.[1] (wikipedia)
However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.
I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.
Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.
There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.
Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.
This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.
For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.
The real history, the one that counts and is not to be found in books, is precisely this one, the one made by simple men; and it is the only one that rules the world.