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

certain recent cases, from Pierro to Maffia,

from Cirese to Buttitta, from Viviani to Gatti.

No doubt the more interesting among the

poets mentioned are those who, instead of

repeating the Nineteenth-Century models,

adapt with exceptional results to the most

advanced methods. This is noticeable above

all in Neapolitan poetry and the poetry from

Lucania to Calabria, giving rise to curious

motivations of a philological nature, but

often of a more markedly sentimental

introspection. As if, after abandoning one's

real town, perhaps with some sadness, one

were to choose an ideal place where even

neologisms can coincide with surviving

retentions. In any case, the singular aspect

offered by the whole landscape of Southern

poetry in dialect today has more to do with

the author's individual experience than with

rules common to all speakers. If in place of a