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

vernacular reconstruction, rooted, therefore,

in an “objective” or realistic mimesis, but

rather chosen exclusively to serve a

subjective expressive need, for a linguistic

incisiveness and stylistic poignancy more

adequate and suitable with respect to

literary language. Thus, it is not by chance

that calques and transpositions from Italian

to dialect, present to a conspicuous degree in

so much “poetry in dialect” of the Twentieth

Century, are not detectable in Cirese’s

poetry.

Cirese’s approach to the formal methods

characteristic of Twentieth-Century poetic

experiences may seem different, but only

prima facie. As was said already, Cirese’s

poetic work, through selections, rejections

and linguistic probings, was inspired by a

rigorous tension toward a rarefied

expressiveness at the edge of silence, which