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

TOMMASO PIGNATELLI

“Tommaso Pignatelli is the pseudonym

of one of the most eminent figures of the

Italian Parliament,” reads the inside cover of

a book entitled Pe cupia’ ‘o chiarfo [To

Imitate the Rainstorm], published in Rome

by AIDE in 1994. This fact makes one

curious, also because the book is

accompanied by a note by Natalino Sapegno,

a critic notoriously not well disposed

towards dialect poets, and by a preface by

Tullio di Mauro, an eminent scholar

esteemed the world over. Sapegno writes:

“It’s been a very long time since we have

read a poet so rich, full-blooded and light.

Within tradition, but beyond the line of Di

Giacomo and Russo, he knows how to use

the humors of the Neapolitan spirit without

exploiting them, and transforms the