Mario Luzi was an Italian poet. His first book, La barca, was published in 1935 and in 1938 he started to teach in high schools in the cities of Parma, San Miniato and Rome. In 1940, he published Avvento notturno; in 1945 he went back to Florence and there he taught at the liceo scientifico. He won the Aristeion Prize in 1991 for his work Frasi e Incisi di un Canto Salutare; in the same year he was proposed for the first time by the Accademia dei Lincei for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ultimately never awarded, when asked for his thoughts by one reporter on his fellow countryman Dario Fo's 1997 success he slammed the phone down: "I'll say only this. I've just about had it up to here!" In October 2004, he was appointed to the Italian Senate as a senator-for-life by President of the Republic Ciampi.