Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

DANTE MAFFIA

Dante Maffia was born in Roseto Capo

Spulico (Cosenza) in 1946. He teaches in a

school in Rome where he has been living for

many years. Editor of Il Policordo and Poetica,

he conducts an intense activity as a militant

critic. Having switched to dialect after a rich

and noteworthy production in Italian, he has

also authored short stories and novels.

His dialect challenge seems due to the

conviction that words are only the

obligatory instrument the poet is forced to

use to symbolize in discourse a modality of

being among other people and objects; sum

of a craftsman’s “tools.” Therefore Maffia

refuses the paradigmatic equivalence

theorized by the neo-avanguarde

(poetry=language), and rejects the low

mimicry of slang in order to aim almost for a