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

in order not to get lost again, not to lose

one’s way in the new Babel of languages.

And the dialect of poetry regains its

“primitive” function of naming objects,

places, feelings, a whole civilization of

manners, forms, behaviors: the most

civilized and honest, the most authentic and

freest way to bear witness to an oppositional

presence with respect to that “civilization”

that has turned even language into a place of

widespread pollution.

Therefore, dialect today can, In Sardinia

and elsewhere, be wedded even to ecology.

At any rate, the ever-growing revival of

dialect poetry at every level is not without

significance. In short, for many people (even

distinguished poets in Italian) dialect has

become a siren. “And so” - Spagnoletti and

Vivaldi write (Poesia dialettale dal

Rinascimento a oggi, Garzanti) ─ what fate