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

county of Màsqalah in Sicily, becomes ─

having emigrated to Kansas City, Detroit,

Los Angeles ─ Mr. Yossiph Shyrin Abdùl

Nàsseri Idrisi; his story affords the poet the

opportunity to fire broadsides against

neocolonialism (“you are free to choose the

type of slavery you want”), but also against

the exponents of Gruppo 63 in Sicily and the

most celebrated Sicilian writers and poets of

the time, accused of receiving honors and

profit from the cultural establishment, target

of the Antigruppo, which he had joined.

Calì’s work is a great poem of love and

death. The eros finds his most significant

exempla in the splendid lyrics of the

“corpus” devoted to Jajita Azzola (Blue

Agate: the name given by the poet to a

passionate love he had in his mature years),

pervaded by a constant sentiment of death.

Thanatos, present in many texts and