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

negation or at least its residue: a bad year,

frequented by “the poor mendicant women

who used to come as stealthily as quails to

steal the wheat” from Ricordi d’estate

[Summer Memories], or those men in search

of some hidden cluster of grapes in Vigna

vendemmiata [Harvested Vineyard], who

nevertheless represent “a hidden treasure,”

the one which indeed animates these pages

of poetry in which, with an almost childlike

awe, with great evocative and visionary

power, with highly suggestive images rich

with ancient charm, Mario Pinna is able to

reclaim for us, “like love which is past”, a

marginal and marginalized world,

unrecoverable for history outside of the

magical and symbolic dimension of poetry.