Not content with merely taking over the urban and modernist themes of Futurist painting, the writers who embraced Italian literary Futurism sought to develop a language appropriate for what they perceived to be the speed and ruthlessness of the early 20th century. They established new genres, the most significant being parole in libertà (“words-in-freedom”), also referred to as free-word poetry. It was poetry liberated from the constraints of linear typography and conventional syntax and spelling. A brief extract from Marinetti’s war poem “Battaglia peso + odore” (1912; “Battle Weight + Smell”) was appended to one of the Futurists’ manifestos as ...(100 of 1671 words)