Thomas G. Bergin, Yale University (“University of Oklahoma Press”, aprile 1968)

In his poem "Per un pubblico nuovo" Majorino alludes to his intention to write for the Mondo di sotto and comments sardonically on the charges of "contenutismo" that he implies are made against his school. It must be said that he is himself a first class example of this vice, if such it be. He is an angry young man, angry at his own government, bitter about the foreign policy of the United States, resentful of conventional standards, impatient with the state of the world. All of which may well do him credit as a man, as a sensitive soul, but it is, I think, a serious handicap to the poet. Not only does his engagement call our attention to his opinions rather than his vision, it has, I think, a deleterious effect on his style. His distortions of syntax, his willful contempt for rhythm, his phantasmagoric imagery -these have shock value, to be sure, but they blur the impact of his poems as poems and indeed occasionally make even his polemical posture a little obscure. However, he has his virtues, more apparent in single lines or in short passages than in any one poem: at his best his exacerbation can give forth an incandescence which is illuminating and moving; his allusions reveal a man of culture. If he is a beatnik, he is one who claims legitimate descent from Baudelaire. Perhaps, now that one thinks of it, Baudelaire was the first of the beatniks. Majorino is certainly not the last; whether he is truly a beatnik or not, his poetry is worth studying as characteristic of the new stream running strongly in Italy nowadays. Perhaps it is better for the soul to be engagé than to be hermetic. But ten years from now, when the names of Lumumba and Saigon no longer raise our hackles, this kind of poetry may well be more deeply submerged than the famous oboe of the cryptic generation. Is there a via media, one asks?