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

and literary, as well critical and

historiographic experiences. They have come

to dialect with a self-awareness that goes far

beyond the usual “restoration” or idyllic

dream in the depths of memory; in these

two very “new” writers, not of course in a

generational sense, dialect represents a field

to be explored for a poetic quest with vast

connotative possibilities, even though their

search takes them in very different

directions. With these last two authors

Molise, beyond the conditioning inherent in

its political and cultural history, strongly felt

until the Sixties, is bound to the rhythms and

breath, the signs and essence of

contemporary poetry, beyond any provincial

boundary: Jovine’s and Rimanelli’s dialect

poetry leads local tradition, with its

conservative specificity, its “backwardness,”

its lags (with the exception of Cirese), to the