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

experience, like other recent ones, it is a

question of redefining the whole scope of

dialect literatures, which can no longer be

considered exclusively in relation to the

greater or lesser degree in which they reflect

the culture of a people, nor be judged on the

extraneous contents of the texts, whether of

protest or anything else. In fact, the effort to

adopt dialect as a language potentially

capable of rising to the rank of instrument

well suited to poetry is becoming

increasingly evident. In order to achieve this

end, it becomes almost indispensable, for the

poet, to assume an attitude of extreme

openness, even when this might entail a sort

of refuge in individual lyricism or the

recovery of models applied differently in

Italian poetry.

Curcio never tries to describe the social

or the political in ideological terms. Beyond