verbivocovisual

— In the view of the formalists, Italian futurism epitomized all that poetics should work against. This assessment, directed specifically at Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who visited Saint Petersburg and Moscow in February 1914, indicates the formalists' unwillingness to acknowledge the many poetic and artistic innovations shared by the Russian and Italian futurists. In the realm of Russian futurist book art and its Italian futurist analogue—the parole-in-libertà (words-in-freedom)—poetic language was transformed by the elimination of grammar and syntax, the experimentation with new arrangements of words and letters on the page, and the highlighting of language for its sonic expressivity. Both Russian futurist book art and the parole-in-libertà incorporated verbal, visual, and sonic elements into their art forms, although the Russians ventured much further into the verbivocovisual than did the Italians.