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

dialettali molisani (1967), edited by Emilio

Ambrogio Paterno, but above all the activity

of the new dialect poets who, already from

the second half of the Fifties (Nina

Guerrizio, Sciure de Carde, 1956); Emilio

Spensieri, Come fusse allora, 1957-1970),

reopen a discourse destined to become, in

time, the most interesting and aestheti¬cally

reliable component of the regional literary

production in general.

In the Sixties and Seventies the dialect

line displays a progression directly

proportional to the massive invasion of the

language of the mass media and imported

technological models. In mostly lyrical-

elegiac tones, the new dialect poets

generally opt for escapes into memory, the

restoration of values dimmed by time or

about to die out, the search for the inner self,

the capture of what is native and natural,