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

voice of the voiceless, of the excluded, of the

last on earth, who people his poetic

universe. As did Vann’Antò with the dialect

of Ragusa, he adopts the speech of

Linguaglossa - an island within the island’s

dialect ─ linking the epochal reality to the

history of Sicily, through the ennobling

thread of language, which represents its

highest cultural testimony. It was, moreover,

a way of developing on the literary level an

aspect of the political engagement of Calì,

who had been a separatist with the Canepa

group before adhering to Marxism (in any

case liberally interpreted); his Sicilian

separatism constitutes a (subdued) leit-motiv

in his poetry.

Calì carried out his commitment as a

poet outside of the channels of the

publishing industry (as instead had been the

case with Buttitta), in a flaunted ─ almost