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

severed tongue of ours, but a continuous,

persistent search for a new identity, as well

as for the one erased by time and men. Often

there is something untidy and patched-up in

this meticulous search, in this movement

between the mimesis of what’s happening in

other parts of Italy and the world (and

Sardinian poetry, in this respect, is lagging

considerably behind) and true

improvisation, somewhat in the wake of

those Sardinian aedos who sang and in part

still sing in the squares. An oral poetry in

which improvisation is all too often a

passioned withdrawing into oneself, a sort of

interior monologue or endophasia. It is a fact

that in every part of the island and in the

great languages of the island (from

Logudorese to Campidanese, from Gallurese

to Sassarese) there has been from the start,

and growing stronger with time, a