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

disalienation was virtually mature: “It was

necessary to move ─ Messina notes ─ from a

poetry, so to speak, that preyed on the

people, the “humble,” to one that was

constructed and sung with the very voice of

the people,”^4 advancing toward a deeper

understanding of the “measure of dialect”

and breaking with the tradition of dialect

poetics, in the direction indicated by Di

Giovanni, but going beyond it.

Besides heeding the lesson that came

from the aula of Frederick II, those poets

prefer to look “elsewhere” for their masters:

from Baudelaire and Valéry to the

surrealists.

In October 1944 the society of writers

and artists of Sicily, presided by Federico De

Maria was founded in Palermo, with

periodic meetings in the Yellow Hall of the

Politeama. In 1946, the year of Di Giovanni’s