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

man of the people who looks to the middle

class when he speaks. The subsequent

collection, Er mantello e la rota [The Cloak

and the Cape], all centered on circumstances

that look to Belli as he thoughtfully

considers life and human destiny, introduces

the poet’s new hell whose center is Rome

and whose outskirts are the other side of a

Rome advancing from the remote shores of a

universal desert. Marè writes in Sìllabe e

stelle [Syllables and Stars], “Streets of Rome,

alleyways: / I often come to visit you. / My

heart on my sleeve, / I look for hand-me-

down myselves.” Mario Lunetta has

observed that for Marè “it is not enough to

relate, to represent with sorrowful wit the

scenes of an Arazzo Romano [Roman

Tapestry] that in any case remained a fiction

to be subjected to words of praise or scorn: