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

Giuseppe Rosato: “[...] It is important to

note, on the level of composition, how Trofa

experimented in dialect with free verse,

which in Italian had appeared only in

Futurist poetry; but it is also significant that

the experience of free verse precedes

chronologically the adoption of the

endecasyllable, which will become exclusive

in his later work. And it is an unusual

process of evolution, or involution, if it is

true that generally a dialect poet has the

desire to find metrical freedom after a start

usually made in the rigorous observance of

tradi¬tional forms. Thus for Trofa one could

speak of innovation within tradition, in

order to stress precisely the fact that the

poet, while respecting the linguistic-cultural

heritage that precedes him, subjects the

latter to a refined process of innova¬tion

[...]”.