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

idiom of his land: ancient and new, its

virginity constantly reborn, like the houri of

Mohammed’s paradise; he inserts jargon,

current and obsolete expressions, digging

deep to bring back to light linguistic vestiges

of Sicilian history. A language of the

underclass that, taken back to its roots, turns

out to be more cultured than he had

imagined. Rosario Contarino has spoken of

the linguistic stance of Calì’s poetry as “a

memorial residue, almost a language of

childhood, of the archaic, of the mother,” at

the same time definable “as a recovery of the

living dialect (though the patrimony of a

minority) on which can be brought to bear

the shaping action of the cultured

craftsman.”^1

The dialectized insertions, derived more

from foreign languages (brisci, slippinu,

giubbòx, tenchiù, etc.) than from Italian,