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

hero (“Rapsodia Garibaldina,” 1949); and as

such destined to become a myth, against

profiteers, usurers, Bourbonists, followers of

Crispi, braggarts, abettors, thieves, jackals.

The controversy takes up a canonical theme

of Calabrian literature, not unlike what

happens in the passages where the poet

breaks into patriotic song, evoking episodes

of 1848 and 1860. Calabrian as well is no

doubt the paramount source of the erotic

tension that runs through one of the

American collections (Peccati [Sins], 1916),

played between popular motifs and ludic

metaphors, whimsical and goliardic.

The political element prevails openly,

instead, in the poetry of Pasquale Creazzo

(1875-1963). As a consequence, an ideological

reading of his work has always been favored.

But when it is stripped of adversarial

connotations, often resentful, shouted,