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

No doubt it is also memory, besides reason,

that carries out the selection, but it is a great

joy to find again, for instance, the wavering

of the “elementary” in Sinisgalli, the “poor

soul of a codfish.” Then one takes a popular

term and inserts it in a formal structure that

gives a new, complete sense to the actions-

lives-experiences being evoked. Besides

Pierro, Malerba and Bufalino are important

to Lotierzo. But he recommends the reading

of dialect dictionaries, whose aligned terms

from time to time cause a mental short

circuit and give rise to the inspiration that

allows us to take up the pen and write in

verse the emerging associations, in keeping

with an unknown psychological law and the

intensity of the experience offered by the

evocation.

Criticism: E. Catalano, Le rose e terremoti,

Venosa, Osanna, 1986; F. Manescalchi, in