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

and U Ddìje puvirìlle^6 [The Poor God] Maria

crowns his inquiry. They attest an

anthropomorphic idea of poetry, sought in

the long dialogue with Baudelaire, pursued

in the footsteps of returning Homer,

investigated in the flesh and blood of his

own and other people’s everyday existence,

stripped in memory, exalted in the word

sparsely arranged in the text because of the

ever present fear of misdecoding. The poet

Maffia has turned many of his cards face up.

The event appears as an instrument capable

of setting off the new language in order to

repossess autonomously archetypal signifiers

deposited in vernacular speech, reinvent

them as sounds and insert them in contexts

capable of modernizing the old signs,

expanding their expressive potential. An

event that tends to signify itself almost as

legend in history, through personal