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

with his songs and dialect poems he

becomes a very original voice in Molisan

dialect poetry. His works in dialect have

been collected posthumously in the volume

Pampuglie [Woodchips], Campobasso, 1973,

edited by Mario Trofa. He also wrote a short

novel, Vita paesana...com’era una volta [Town

Life...How It Used to Be], Campobasso, 1935)

that offers a lively portrait of Molisan life

and customs in the early Twentieth Century.

Luigi Antonio Trofa (1879-1936), an

unorthodox, eclectic, irreverent poet,

capable however of intimate, absorbed and

moving elf-withdrawal, takes up dialect as

the instrument of poetic expression after the

most varied experiences, both as an active

journalist, within the limits allowed by a

province such as Campobasso’s (Cf. the

satirical reviews Il Gufo, Il Foglietto, Sci-Ta-