California Italian Studies

This article examines the ends of lyric poetry in the teleological sense ( il fine) by investigating the end ( la fine) of certain poems—the textual endings and instances of closure (or lack thereof), i.e., the final strophe, the final verse. In particular, it analyzes some exemplary instances of non-closure in modern and contemporary (mostly Italian) poetry. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben and Timothy Bahti, it explores a peculiar form of non-closure, namely, endings of poems that, by means of self-reflexivity, repetition, and chiastic structures, re-direct the text and its reader back towards its beginning, toward a new reading.