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

and emotionally, the people who ─

implicitly or explicitly ─ are always his

privileged interlocutors; the poet soon takes

to the piazzas, recovering an archaic orality,

spurred by the very use of dialect. In 1954 he

published Lu pani si chiama pani [Bread Is

Bread], with Italian translation by Salvatore

Quasimodo and drawings by Renato

Guttuso.

In “La Paci” [Peace] he stigmatizes the

immense tragedy of war, exalting socialism

and Christian solidarity. The flag of his

political faith is as red as Christ’s tunic^1 , who

one day will come down from the cross and

will take with him “poor mothers” and

“landless peasants” and will drive the

merchants from the temple.^2

This palingenetic impulse is totally

absent from the work of poets ─ popular and