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

and loses all hope only when it is robbed of

it. The poem “Lingua e dialettu” is the

highest, most heartfelt expression of

Buttitta’s art.

Il poeta in piazza [The Poet in the Piazza,

1974] betrays the rethinking which took

place in the West after the news of Stalin’s

purges and the pressure put by the Soviet

regime on dissident writers. The poet

reaffirms his faith in socialism: not in the

one embodied by a regime or the

dictatorship of the party, but in the one that

can be born, one day, if men learn to change

from within, if they will be able to bring out

their inner selves: it is no use to have a new

suit with old sentiments or to have money in

the bank and no books in the house.

With Le pietre nere [Black Stones] (1983)

Buttitta returns renewed to the roots of his