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

continually enriched by the people with new

vital lymph. In the preface to Lobina’s book,

Antonello Satta wrote: “Benvenuto Lobina

lives fully his poetic experiences in this

identity, conscious of the “ethnocide”

threatening his ‘desperate’ land.” In

hindsight, it must be said that Lobina’s song

of “celebration” and revolt has been, to a

degree, prophetic: he has been able to see,

even among the mournful litanies of his

time, the future awaiting his island.

His greatest merit has been always being

able to strike the right balance between

public and private sentiment, between

orality and writing, between tradition and

innovation, between collective memory and

ethnic-epic sentiment.

Criticism: F. Loi, in Il Sole/24 ore,

5/17/1992; A. Mundula, in La Stampa-