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

tumult of Stravinsky, we find a text that

denies agnitions by the sea or Mt. Vesuvius,

and stands on a promontory where there is

no room for vagueness or lyrical and

metaphysical indefiniteness. And yet pain

and feelings abound, but they do not

unthread in rivulets, in assonances, in

plaintiveness: they intend to remain what

they are, to exist without false unions.

Interesting, for a different reason, is the

poetry in the dialect of Cappella, in the

province of Naples, of Michele Sovente, who

adopts the mother tongue after writing in

Italian and Latin. Sovente, like almost all

contemporary dialect poets, is a man of vast

and refined culture, and his poetry (until

now available only in journals and

anthologies) is affected by this, maybe

because his education was too grounded on

the Latin classics, their quantitative music,