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

necessary linguistic ferment to which poetry

has always entrusted its very nature.

Only in the aftermath of W.W. II, and to

a large degree thanks to the influence

exerted by Pasolini's specific lesson (but

perhaps, more indirectly, Gadda's as well), a

different attitude in favor of dialects was

beginning to emerge, even in the South.

They were gradually being seen as flexible

codes capable of being exploited for the sake

of poetry, rather than as primary signifiers

tied to the experience of reality. The first to

sense this were poets who, abandoning

common language, affected too deeply by

the levelling contamination of consumerism

(Pierro), but also very resistant to the

artificial sophistication of neoavant-garde

ideological operations on insignificance,

turned to a sort of almost archetypical

language, a mental language rather than