Repetition and accumulation are the rhizomes of his work: "There's no telling how much green / is buried under this green / nor how much rain under this rain / many are the infinities ..." For Zanzotto--like Ammons, probably his closest American counterpart--life is an " anancasm " of seeing and ideating, which the poet breaks down to its constituent elements.

The other two modes are evolution by chance (tychasm) and evolution by mechanical necessity ( anancasm ).