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

human minds: if poetry means romantic

mawkishness ─ “the dangling moon” ─ he

does not consider himself a poet and isn’t; he

is a poet if he can “call in basements and

caves / people who are lost, abandoned and

broken.”

In 1956 he published Lamentu pi Turiddi

Carnivali [Lament for Turiddu Carnevale], in

octaves, in which the death at the hand of

the Mafia of the Sicilian union leader is sung

with fiery, sorrowful tones, as in Lorca’s

famous Llanto for Ignacio Sanchez, but on

classical foundations: from the chanson de

geste. And in it mingle the ballads of ballad

singers and Jacopone’s laude.

1963 is the year of Lu trenu di lu suli [The

Train of the Sun], on the drama of

emigrants, and the collection La peddi nova

[The New Skin], in which the poet, in the